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PRESENTKl) 15V 



SEVEN YEARS AT THE 
PRUSSIAN COURT 



SEVEN YEARS AT THE 
PRUSSIAN COURT 



BY 

EDITH KEEN 

FOR SEVERAL YEARS COMPANION TO THE PRINCESS MARGARETHE OF PRUSSIA 



NEW YORK 
JOHN LANE COMPANY 

MCMXVII 






.3 



V 



Printed in Great Britain 



h. 






CONTENTS 



CHAP. PAGE 

I MY EARLY DAYS AT POTSDAM . 



7 

. 29 

. 53 

. 82 

. 108 

. 142 

VII SERVANTS IN GERMAN ROYAL HOUSEHOLDS . . 171 



II THE PRINCESS MARGARETHE 

III THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS LEOPOLD 

IV INCOGNITO VISITS TO ENGLAND 
V ABOUT THE NEUES PALAIS 

VI ABOUT THE NEUES PALAIS (continued) 



VIII LOVE AFFAIRS AND DRESS BILLS OF GERMAN 

ROYALTIES 191 

IX THE CROWN PRINCE AND PRINCESS . . .212 

X AFTER THE MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS MARGARETHE 232 

XI THE DAYS BEFORE THE WAR 254 

XII AT POTSDAM AFTER THE DECLARATION OF WAR . 271 

XIII I LEAVE POTSDAM 289 

XIV MY JOURNEY HOME 303 



i. - 



SEVEN YEARS AT THE 
PRUSSIAN COURT 

CHAPTER I 

MY EARLY DAYS AT POTSDAM 

I LEFT this country just seven years ago to enter 
the service of the Princess Frederick Leopold of 
Prussia, who is sister of the German Empress and 
sister-in-law of the Duchess of Connaught, and who 
is thus closely related to the chief reigning houses 
of Europe. 

I obtained my situation by answering an adver- 
tisement which appeared in one of the London 
papers for a dresser to a German lady. No more 
particulars were given in the advertisement. I 
was at that time in the employment of the late 
Duchess of Northumberland, and I answered the 
advertisement in the hope, not so much of bettering 
myself (for I was very happy with Her Grace), but 
because I wanted to travel. I had been already to 
Italy and France, but never to Germany. 

A few days after I had answered the advertise- 
ment I received a letter in reply to mine, asking me 
to call on a Mrs. Sherenstein at the Hans Crescent 
Hotel in London. 

7 



fib 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

Sherenstein was the name which the Princess 
Frederick Leopold assumed when staying in London 
incognito — as she very often did. Of course, I 
had no idea of her identity when I went to see her, 
but I had not been long in her presence before I 
guessed that she was probably a royalty. Another 
lady was in the room with her — the Baroness 
Knesebeck, her lady-in-waiting, as I discovered — 
and this lady, obviously a person of rank and good 
breeding, was so deferential and ceremonious in 
her manner towards Mrs. Sherenstein that it did 
not require much astuteness to guess that the 
latter was probably of Royal rank. 

Mrs. Sherenstein was a tall woman, with a type 
of face I should call severe. Her nose was promi- 
nent, her eyes dark and intelligent, and her mouth 
suggested great determination. She received me 
graciously. She was standing near the fireplace 
when I was shown into the room ; she shook hands 
with me, and asked me to be seated. Her lady-in- 
waiting, who was seated at a writing-table, bowed 
to me. 

The Princess asked me a few very ordinary 
questions (she spoke English perfectly) as to 
whether I was strong, how long I had been with 
the Duchess, and what was my religion. 

After talking to me for about five or six minutes 
she said something to her lady-in-waiting and then 
left the room. 

The Baroness, an extremely well-attired lady, 

8 



My Early Days at Potsdam 

some years younger than the Princess, then talked 
to me for a little while. She spoke with a much 
more marked German accent than the Princess. 

A week later I received a brief letter from Berlin 
from the Baroness Knesebeck, referring to our 
interview in London, saying that the Princess 
Leopold of Prussia would engage me on the terms 
arranged, and requesting that I should leave for 
Berlin on the following Wednesday. 

I arrived in Berlin near midnight, and was met 
by an elderly manservant in the Princess's employ. 
I had been instructed to stand in a certain place 
at the station, holding my handkerchief in my hand. 
The man came up to me and said my name, Edith 
Keen. I nodded, and then followed him to a 
brougham, with the Royal arms on the door, that 
was waiting outside the station. The man could 
not speak a word of English, and was one of the 
gloomiest-looking persons I had ever set eyes on. 
It was a depressing arrival . But worse was to follow. 

I was driven to the Prince's castle in Berlin. 
The family were not in residence (they were at 
their castle at Potsdam, where I went next day), 
and the only light in the place was a small one in 
a side hall, by which I entered. The door was 
opened by another elderly servant, who apparently 
expected me. He carried a lantern in his hand 
and led me down a long corridor, then down some 
flights of stone steps, and along a stone passage 
all in darkness. 

9 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

Stopping at a door, he opened it and motioned 
me to go in. For a moment I hesitated. I felt 
a wild desire to rush away, and an overpowering 
wish to get out once more into the open air. I 
looked at the old manservant. His expression- 
less, withered face filled me with a vague terror. 
I felt like some trapped animal. I walked into the 
room. It was a small apartment with stone walls. 
In one corner was a bed; there was a mat on the 
floor and a heavy round oak table in the centre, 
on which was an old circular brass candlestick. 

The old man lighted the candle, said something 
ill German which I supposed was good-night, and 
then left the room, shutting the door after him. 
To this day I have never forgotten the feeling of 
hopeless despair that came over me as I heard the 
door shut, and listened to the old man's steps 
echoing down the stone passage. I was dead tired, 
hungry, and more unhappy and frightened than I 
had ever felt in my life before. I cried myself to 
sleep. 

The next morning I was awakened at six o'clock 
by some one knocking at my door, who told me 
I was to leave for Potsdam in half-an-hour. I 
arrived at the Prince's castle at Potsdam at about 
half-past seven, when I had a very good breakfast. 
A regular English breakfast — fried eggs and bacon, 
fish, toast, marmalade and coffee. The meal was 
served to me in a large room on the first floor over- 
looking a wide expanse of park and wooded uplands. 

10 



My Early Days at Potsdam 

After breakfast I was shown upstairs to a room 
that was to be my home for the next seven years. 
At the top of the staircase the manservant who was 
behind me carrying my luggage came to a standstill. 
I did not know which way to turn and could not 
understand why the servant should stand drawn 
up stiffly to attention like a soldier on parade; 
then, looking down the corridor, I saw a young girl 
of about nineteen or twenty standing at a cooking- 
stove, engaged apparently in making cakes. 

I went up to her and asked her the way to my 
room, to which she took me at once. She was the 
Princess Victoria Margarethe of Prussia, the eldest 
child and only daughter of the Prince and Princess 
Frederick Leopold. The rigid rules of the Prussian 
Court forbade the servant to pass the Princess, and 
that was why he stood at the head of the staircase. 

It was really in the service of the young Princess 
that I had been engaged, although I did not learn 
that until I saw her. We were fated to become very 
close and good friends, and I have nothing but the 
kindest and most pleasant recollections of her, 
though she is a German. 

The family consisted of the Prince and Princess 
Leopold, their daughter and three sons, the Princes 
Frederick Karl, Frederick Seigesmund and Frederick 
Leopold. 

Klein Glienicke, the residence of the Leopolds, 
was one of a number of Royal castles scattered about 
Potsdam. 

11 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

It was constructed in a curious and what seemed 
to me to be a very inconvenient manner. 

On the first floor were situated the Princess 
Leopold's boudoir and dressing-room, and to reach 
these you had to go through a suite of rooms con- 
sisting of a drawing-room, dining-room and music- 
room, or else through the servants' quarters. The 
bedroom and boudoir of the Princess Victoria 
Margarethe were situated directly over her mother's 
apartments, and the young Princess to reach her 
rooms had also to go through the servants' quarters 
or through her mother's rooms. As the Princess 
Leopold was not the sort of person who at all liked 
to have her privacy invaded when she was in her 
boudoir or dressing-room, even by her daughter, 
the Princess Margarethe usually went through the 
servants' quarters when going to her rooms; her 
friends who came to see her had, of course, to do 
this also, for the Princess Leopold would on no 
account allow any one outside members of her own 
family to enter her rooms. 

But these rather curious arrangements were, as 
I soon learned, by no means the only curious thing 
about this Royal establishment. The character, 
disposition and general conduct of its master and 
mistress were decidedly curious, but I was at 
Klein Glienicke some little time before I became 
fully acquainted with all the eccentricities of the 
Prince and Princess Leopold. 

The front entrance of Klein Glienicke opened 

12 



My Early Days at Potsdam 

directly on to the little village of Glienicke in- 
habited by the tenants and pensioners of Prince 
Leopold; at the back of the house was a stretch 
of flower gardens large enough to be called a park, 
and across the roadway in front was another large 
private park. It was very, very private, indeed, 
for no one was on any account allowed to enter it 
except the Leopolds and members of their family. 

There was also an entrance to this park by a 
tunnel that ran under the roadway separating the 
park from the Schloss. The use of this tunnel was 
strictly reserved for the sole and exclusive use of 
Prince Leopold, who would on no account ever walk 
across the roadway. This was but one of the 
eccentricities of this curious Prussian Prince. 

About the gardens at Klein Glienicke were a 
number of beautiful large fountains. I noticed, 
however, that they were never playing ; after I had 
been at the Schloss about four months I learned the 
reason for this. They were only set playing on 
one day in the year, the birthday of Prince Leopold's 
sister, H.R.H. the Duchess of Connaught. I was 
told that on one and never-to-be-forgotten occasion 
a newly arrived gardener, who had neglected to 
properly and thoroughly master the rather lengthy 
list of rules and customs that prevailed at Klein 
Glienicke, set the fountains a-playing on a day 
that to most people would no doubt have appeared 
to be a suitable one for an aquatic display of the 
kind — a scorching hot day in early June — but ere 

13 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

the fountains had been at work ten minutes the 
luckless gardener learned that in setting these 
fountains playing he had committed an almost 
unpardonable offence. He expiated it, I believe, 
by a week's confinement in his house; but that 
was a small punishment; it was what Prince 
Leopold said and the manner in which it was said 
that nearly frightened the poor gardener to death. 
Never again were the fountains set playing except 
on July 25. 

It was, of course, a graceful compliment to his 
sister to whom, by the way, the Prince was much 
devoted, that he should allow the fountains to be 
set playing only on her birthday, but I could not 
help sometimes wondering what the Prince would 
have done if the birthday of Her Royal Highness 
had fallen, say, on January 25, when, as a general 
rule, the frost would have rather interfered with the 
working of the fountains. 

The gardens at Klein Glienicke, by the way, were 
planned and designed rather in accordance with 
English ideas. Some years before the outbreak of 
war Prince Leopold followed the example of his 
cousin, the Kaiser, and got a head-gardener from 
England who, unluckily for himself, is now enjoying 
German hospitality at Ruhleben in company with 
the Kaiser's gardener. 

The Princess Leopold, I must say, went to con- 
siderable trouble to keep the man from being 
interned ; she went even so far as to send a telegram 

14 



My Early Days at Potsdam 

to the Kaiser at the front on the subject, but the 
mihtary authorities are supreme in such matters 
in Germany, and the Kaiser either could not or 
would not interfere with their decision; indeed, 
the Kaiser's own gardener, as I said, was interned. 

Most of the furniture at Klein Glienicke was 
purchased in England, a fact about which the 
Leopolds were rather proud. 

It was all extremely good — very heavy and solid — 
but in the general arrangements of the rooms there 
was an almost complete absence of daintiness or 
of light touches or pretty effects. 

In nearly all the great German houses that I 
have been in, with the exception of the Saxe-Coburg- 
Gotha's castle at Gotha, I have observed the same 
thing : a hard, bare effect, often unrelieved even 
by any attempt at floral decoration. 

The only tastefully arranged room at Klein 
Glienicke was the Princess Margarethe's boudoir, 
which looked bright and pretty with its coloured 
cretonnes and plentiful display of photographs, 
among which were autographed pictures of her 
aunt, H.R.H. the Duchess of Connaught (in all 
the rooms at the Schloss there was, I think, a 
photograph of Her Royal Highness), the German 
Empress, the Kaiser, the Princess Christian, and 
the wife of ex-king Manoel, who before her marriage 
was one of the most intimate girl friends the young 
Princess had. 

Not only did the Leopolds furnish from London, 

15 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

but usually they had all the work in the way of re- 
papering and painting at their different residences 
done by a London firm. 

Half-a-dozen men from a well-known London 
firm of house decorators came over to carry out 
some work at Flatow Schloss, a residence of the 
Leopolds in West Prussia, which they visited for 
a short while every summer, a little while before the 
outbreak of war. 

The men are in Germany still, for they were all 
interned after the outbreak of war, and the work 
they came to carry out, I believe, still remains 
uncompleted. 

The Princess Leopold had the poorest opinion of 
German goods and German tradespeople, as, indeed, 
most well-to-do Germans have. The Princess often 
remarked that in most German shops the goods 
were about on a par with the manners one en- 
countered there, and that both were very bad. 

Klein Glienicke is separated from all the other 
castles about Potsdam by that very picturesque 
river, the Havel ; on the Potsdam side of the river 
are Marmor Palais, the summer residence of the 
Crown Prince; Sans Souci, an unoccupied castle; 
Neues Babelsburg, also unoccupied; the Villa 
Leignitz, the residence of the Prince August Wil- 
helm ; and the Kaiser's residence, the Neues Palais. 

The Neues Palais was about three miles from the 
Leopolds, and the Marmor Palais was about a 
quarter of an hour's walk from Klein Glienicke. 

16 



My Early Days at Potsdam 

I often walked over to the Marmor Palais, the 
grounds of which were open to the public whether 
the Crown Prince and Princess were in residence 
or not. There were two well-laid-down lawn- 
tennis courts at the Marmor Palais; lawn tennis 
fe was a game about which the Germans became very 
keen during the last ten years. 

When the Crown Princess was at Marmor Palais 
she frequently gave small afternoon tennis parties, 
and men whose names have become rather well 
known in England since the outbreak of war have 
been her guests on these occasions. 

Von Jagow, the German Foreign Secretary, and 
Dr. von Bethmann-Hollweg, both good players of 
the veteran class, have played at the tennis courts 
at Marmor Palais, and so has Lieutenant von 
Tirpitz, the son of the Admiral, who is now a 
prisoner in England. 

The Kaiser, of course, often played lawn tennis 
at Marmor Palais, but as His Majesty must always 
win the games in which he takes part, they cannot 
be very interesting to the other players. I once asked 
a lady at the Imperial Court if it would be contrary 
to etiquette to win a set from the Emperor. " No," 
was the reply, " but it would be contrary to reason ; 
only a mad person would do such a thing." 

Often American and English friends of the Crown 
Princess who were staying in Berlin were guests 
at her lawn-tennis parties at the Marmor Palace. 

The uninhabited Schloss Neues Babelsburg was 
B 17 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

rather an interesting place. It was built by the 
Kaiser's grandfather, William, and was supposed 
to be a copy of Windsor Castle on a small scale. 
I heard a rather curious story about this Schloss, 
the Crown Prince was once made a prisoner there 
for nearly two days. 

There were several versions of this story current 
at Potsdam, but as far as I could gather, what 
actually happened was this : the Crow^n Prince 
went with an officer, who had newly joined the 
Prussian Guards Regiment at Potsdam, to show 
him the castle. The Prince and the officer went 
into one of the upper rooms to look at a table on 
which Frederick the Great had carved his name, 
and while the two were looking at the table they 
heard the heavy oak door of the room close behind 
them, and the Prince and his companion were 
made prisoners. After being confined for nearly 
two days some chance visitors to the castle, passing 
by the room where the prisoners were, heard rap- 
pings at the door. They stopped and then heard 
faint shouts for help. The caretaker of the castle 
was quickly summoned, but he declared he had no 
key of the door of the room in which the prisoners 
were. A couple of carpenters were then sent for; 
they soon arrived with their tools, and in a few 
minutes the Prince and his companion were at 
liberty, but in a semi-starved condition, and so 
weak that neither could walk. They were, indeed, 
in much the same state apparently, as that to which 

18 



My Early Days at Potsdam 

the Germans have reduced EngHsh prisoners of 
war. 

A messenger was then dispatched to the Neues 
Palais and the Emperor informed of the discovery 
that had been made at the Neues Babelsburg. 
The Emperor and Empress at once drove to the 
Schloss and conveyed the Prince and his friend 
back to the Neues Palais. The Prince's sudden 
disappearance had, of course, caused considerable 
alarm, and inquiries as to his whereabouts were 
being conducted throughout Germany when he 
was found. The whole story of his disappearance 
and how he was found was kept as strict a secret 
as possible at the German Court. The mystery of 
the whole affair lay in the fact that it was impossible 
to explain how the Prince and his companion had 
got locked into the room. The heavy oak door was 
held back by an iron hook fastened in the wall 
outside the room, the hook going through a ring 
in the door. Some one must have freed the 
hook from the ring and deliberately shut the 
door. 

There were two possible solutions of the problem 
as to who that person could have been. One was 
the caretaker of the castle who had once been a 
servant in the employ of the Emperor, who had 
been dismissed for some petty offence; the other 
solution was a lady, who rightly or wrongly con- 
sidered that she had been badly treated by the 
officer who was with the Prince ; the lady had cer- 

19 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

tainly been seen in the castle grounds on the after- 
noon of the visit of the Prince and his friend to the 
castle. 

This affair, although it occurred some fifteen 
years ago, forms still (unless the war has killed the 
interest in it) a favourite topic of discussion and 
speculation among the Royal retainers and pen- 
sioners about Potsdam. 

Sans Souci is another empty Royal castle at 
Potsdam ; in the drive between Sans Souci and the 
Neues Palais there are several most objectionable 
statues of women put up by the Emperor Frederick. 
These statues are in no sense works of art — ^they are 
simply crude indecencies ; the Kaiser has frequently 
been asked to have them removed by people who 
could venture to make such a suggestion to him 
and who might be supposed to have some influence 
with him. The Empress wanted to have them 
removed; Prince Biilow often urged the Emperor 
to have them taken away, and even dared to 
describe them, so I w^as told, as a disgrace to the 
man who had put them up — but the statues remain, 
and the reason they do, I believe, is because they 
afford the Emperor occasional opportunities for 
the sort of jesting that he likes to indulge in, 
especially with new comers to the Neues Palais 
who have never before seen the statues. 

The Villa Leignitz, the residence of the Prince 
and Princess August Wilhelm, is the smallest of 
the Royal residences about Potsdam. It is about 

20 



My Early Days at Potsdam 

the size of a detached villa in any of the London 
suburbs rented at about £100 per annum. 

The Princess employed a lot of her time in 
gardening, and she would often sit in her garden 
in the summer time doing needlework, at which 
she was rather skilled. She was particularly clever 
at altering dresses, and in this way extended con- 
siderably the life of a good many of her gowns. 

The Prince and Princess lived very quietly. 
The Prince August Wilhelm was generally regarded 
as the handsomest of the Imperial family, but he 
was rather delicate and was the only one of the 
Kaiser's sons who did not enter the army or navy. 
He was found some sort of position in the clerical 
department of the Reichstag. 

A large part of Potsdam belonged to the Emperor, 
some of the Royal estate has been in the possession 
of the Hohenzollerns for a long time, but the 
greater part of it was secured by purchase by the 
Kaiser's grandfather, father, and by the All Highest 
himself. 

I heard that shortly after his accession the 
Kaiser secured about six acres, that is now one of 
the most valuable parts of the Potsdam property, 
in a manner that redounded more to his astuteness 
for business than his kingly honour. The Kaiser 
was advised by his estate agent to acquire the 
ground I have referred to, now covered by good 
residential and business houses; the owner, how- 
ever, declined to part with it except at a much 

21 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

higher figure than the Emperor was prepared to 
pay. The owner was a tradesman in Berhn, who 
had had the ground from some man in settlement of 
a debt amounting, I beheve, to £250, which was at 
the time more than the full value that the ground 
would have fetched in the open market, for land 
about Potsdam was at that time comparatively 
cheap. The tradesman, however, believed that 
in acquiring the ground he had made a good 
speculative investment, especially as it had been 
a choice between losing the amount of his debt 
altogether and taking the land in settlement of it. 

The tradesman resolved to stick to his land and 
did so for five years, until the Kaiser's eyes were 
attracted to it. 

The Kaiser's agent ascertained the figure at 
which the tradesman had secured it and offered him 
the same sum, plus five per cent, interest on it 
for five years. The offer was refused; ultimately 
the tradesman was offered £400, but £700 was the 
lowest figure he w^ould accept. The matter then 
dropped, but a month later the tradesman was 
served with a notice stating that his land was 
required for military purposes, and shortly after- 
wards he received an official offer for it from the 
German Government of £150. 

Now in Germany, I have been told, that when 
land is required for military purposes the owner is 
generally well-advised to accept any offer the 
Government make liim for it — he can, if he pleases, 

22 



My Early Days at Potsdam 

put his own valuation on it and have the selHng 
price fixed in a court of law — but in nine cases out 
of ten that is a proceeding that the owner loses 
by, for usually it results in his having to accept the 
Government's offer or even a lower one; rarely or 
never does he get an increase on the original offer. 
If the owner is an influential person he always 
gets a good price offered to him; if he is not, the 
price is usually a low one. 

The tradesman wisely recognized that it would 
be useless for him to attempt to obtain a higher 
price for his land than the value the military 
authorities had put on it, and he parted with it 
at the Government figure. Six months later the 
Kaiser acquired the land for himself from the 
Government for exactly the figure that the trades- 
man had been paid for it. 

I heard this story told at a political gathering 
in Berlin, and from all I heard from people about 
Potsdam it appears to be true in every particular. 

It was, of course, at the Kaiser's instigation that 
the land was requisitioned by the military authori- 
ties, who were simply used as the means by which 
the owner of the land was compelled to part with 
it at a low figure to the Emperor, who coveted it. 

The Kaiser, about Potsdam, at any rate, did not 
seem to be regarded on the whole as a bad landlord ; 
there was a system in existence on the Royal estate 
at Potsdam by which a tenant who got into diffi- 
culties could borrow money from a fund at a very 

28 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

low rate of interest and repay it by extremely 
easy instalments : as a matter of fact, this plan in 
reality worked quite as much for the benefit of 
the Kaiser as it did for the welfare of his tenants. 
Every tenant on the estate had to make a yearly 
contribution to the fund; the Kaiser subscribed 
a sum amounting to ten per cent, on the total 
subscriptions ; but, of course, the fund was practi- 
cally kept going by the subscriptions of the tenants, 
and the Kaiser derived all the benefit that accrues 
to a landlord by tiding a good tenant over a period 
of financial trouble. However, as far as I could 
gather, the tenants on the Royal estate regarded 
the plan as a very excellent one, and its successful 
working as being largely due to the generosity of 
the Kaiser. 

The Kaiser was the owner of Marmor Palais, the 
residence of the CrowTi Prince. In connection 
with the occupation of the Palais by the Prince, I 
heard a rather amusing story. 

The Kaiser agreed to let him have it free of rent 
until a son had been born to the Prince — until 
then the Prince had to pay a rent to his father of 
£200 per annum. 

\Mien, a year after the Prince's marriage a son 
was born, the Kaiser, in response to a telegram of 
congratulation sent him by the King of Bavaria 
on the birth of a grandson and heir to the German 
throne, replied : "I celebrate the occasion by 
losing £200 per annum, but, nevertheless, rejoice," 

24 



My Early Days at Potsdam 

The Glienicke estate was entirely the property 
of Prince Leopold, who was wealthier than the 
Kaiser. The Prince was, indeed, the wealthiest 
of the Prussian Princes, but this was, no doubt, 
largely due to the fact that he spent what was 
probably less than half of his income. 

The Prince was the most tyrannical landlord 
that could well be imagined, and was simply 
detested by his tenants and all his dependents. 
I shall have much more to say of the Prince later 
on; it is sufficient to say here that I had not been 
long at Glienicke before I began to understand the 
extraordinary dislike — I might almost say hatred — 
with which both the Prince and Princess Leopold 
were regarded by nearly everybody who were 
brought much into contact with them. 

One fact, by the way, I discovered soon after my 
arrival at Klein Glienicke that would have made 
me leave it at once only for the Princess Margarethe, 
whom, even in that short while, I had grown greatly 
to like, and who wanted me very much to stay 
with her. What I allude to was a sort of detective 
system that prevailed in this Royal establishment, 
'^'.where it seemed to be taken as a matter of course 
that no member of the household could be trusted, 
not even the few people in it who had been somehow 
persuaded to remain in it for many years. 

There were always at least two detectives, a 
man and a woman, employed in the household, 
especially for the purpose of watching and spying 

25 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

on the members of it. Usually they were in the 
guise of servants. I was never quite sure which 
of the servants might be a detective; however, I 
made up my mind not to trouble myself about the 
matter, but at the same time the knowledge that 
detectives were in the house created a most un- 
pleasant feeling until I grew accustomed to it. 

With the ladies-in-waiting I got on fairly well. 
The two wath whom I was brought most frequently 
into contact were the Baroness Knesebeck and 
Fraulein von Stromberg. The former was chiefly 
in attendance on the Princess Leopold; the latter 
acted as lady-in-waiting to the Princess Margarethe. 

The Baroness Knesebeck, a lady of about thirty- 
four, conformed in her manners, ideas and conversa- 
tion to the regular type of lady-in-waiting that is 
to be met with in German Royal households. 

I could never imagine the Baroness offending 
in the minutest degree against the strict, rigid and 
complicated etiquette of the Prussian Court, a 
close study of which had probably formed the most 
serious work of her life. 

She was a machine that performed its work 
day in and day out perfectly. In talking of any 
matter that related to her duty as a lady-in-waiting 
she was always extraordinarily clear and explicit; 
her letters on the same sort of matters were finished 
examples in the art of clear and courteous expres- 
sion. Her manners were rather sharp, but dignified, 
and they were always precisely the same — I never 

26 



My Early Days at Potsdam 

saw the Baroness in a temper and I do not think 
I ever heard her laugh; she smiled pleasantly at 
regular intervals in conversation. Her curtsey and 
hand-shake were the sort of things that could only, 
I am sure, be acquired by years of practice. She 
dressed well, at all times, and she was punctiliously 
careful that her gown should always suit the 
occasion. 

Fraulein von Stromberg was more human, but 
I liked her less well than the Baroness. She went 
about a great deal to social functions as lady-in- 
waiting to the Princess; she had social ambitions, 
and joined the Princess Leopold's household for 
this reason. On her father's side she belonged to 
an ancient but impoverished aristocratic family. 
Her father saved the family from absolute ruin by 
marrying the daughter of a successful business 
man ; but this method of an ancient family retriev- 
ing their fortunes was not then in Germany, at 
any rate, regarded with much favour among the 
aristocratic classes, perhaps because they were not 
fully alive to its advantages. Anyway, it was 
considered by the friends and relations of the late 
Baron Stromberg that it would have been better 
for him to have remained poor than to have allied 
himself with the daughter of a commercial man. 
The result was that the Baron and his wife, after 
their marriage, found they had to seek society 
among the friends of the latter. 

I do not think that that troubled either of them ; 

27 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

certainly it did not trouble Baron Stromberg, who, 
after years of comparative poverty, could keenly 
appreciate the solid advantages that his wife's 
money enabled him to enjoy. If his own equals in 
rank would no longer ask him to dinner, he could 
at all events enjoy very excellent dinners in very 
comfortable surroundings; and the Baron did not 
grumble. 

When his daughter grew up, however, she re- 
garded things in a different light. She held her 
bourgeois relatives and friends in the greatest con- 
tempt and assiduously cultivated her relatives on 
her father's side, through one of whom she obtained 
a position in the household of the Princess Leopold, 
which she used to completely re-establish her 
family in the position that they had once occupied. 
She was quite a clever person in her own way, 
was this Fraulein von Stromberg. 

There was another lady-in-waiting, a Countess 
Schwerin; she acted as Mistress of the Robes to 
the Princess Leopold. She was very dignified, but 
an extremely nice, kind-hearted lady; I came 
across her but seldom, and had not much to say 
to her. 



28 



CHAPTER II 

THE PRINCESS MARGARETHE 

I SHALL always cherish the most kindly recol- 
lections of the Princess Victoria Margarethe. She 
stands out in my mind as something that I can 
look back on during my life in Germany, entirely 
dissociated from any unpleasant memories. 

I liked the Princess from the moment I first 
spoke to her on the staircase, when she was making 
cakes. She regularly made a cake for my father 
twice a year, at his birthday and Christmas, and 
sent it to him at his home in England. Her whole 
character and disposition were the very reverse of 
what one would think her upbringing would have 
made them. 

The Princess practically never knew what it 
was to have a mother. She never certainly knew 
what a mother's love meant. By some unhappy 
fate the birth of the Princess seemed to have been 
the cause of the very unhappy state of affairs that 
existed between her parents; at all events, from 
all I heard, it was from the date of the Princess's 
birth that the relations of her father and mother 
became of a most unhappy kind. In some curious 
way the Princess Leopold seemed to regard her 
daughter as the cause of her own unhappiness, 

29 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

and she treated her, not as a mother, but as a 
spiteful woman might treat a young girl whom 
she disliked and who was in her power. 

The Princess was, of course, brought up very 
strictly; a Prussian Princess naturally would be; 
but in the upbringing of the poor Princess Mar- 
garethe there was something much more than mere 
strictness — ^there was the most uncalled for harsh- 
ness and severity; and the strictness was not 
relaxed when the Princess grew up, but the harsh- 
ness, unkindness and severity increased. The 
Princess could never do even the simplest thing 
without first getting her parents' permission. She 
could not order a carriage to go for a drive without 
her mother's leave, she could not go to visit a friend 
in Berlin, or ask a friend to her home, without in 
the first place obtaining her father's or mother's 
consent — and often this consent would be withheld 
for the deliberate purpose of annoying the Princess. 

Sometimes the Princess would ask her mother 
might she go to such and such a place on a certain 
day — it might be to stay with some friends in Berlin, 
or possibly to go to a party that the Princess was 
specially anxious to attend. Her mother would say 
" yes," and then on the day of the party the young 
Princess in the morning would receive a message 
from her mother saying that she must not go to it. 

If the Princess tried to see her mother on the 
matter the chances were that she would be denied 
admission to her rooms ; and if she were admitted 

30 



The Princess Margarethe 



the poor Princess would be only severely lectured — 
abused, would be the more correct word — for want- 
ing to do something that her parent did not wish 
her to do. And it was not on such occasions only 
that the Princess incurred her mother's wrath — I 
have known the unfortvmate girl to be summoned 
to her mother's room and violently abused for no 
reason at all except that the Princess licopold 
would chance on that day to be in an exceptionally 
irritable mood, and in those moods of hers her 
thoughts always turned to her first-born child. 

Often the poor Princess would come to my room, 
after one of these cruel interviews with her mother, 
crying as if her heart would break. There was 
nothing that her mother would not say to her 
child; everything that w^ould sting and hurt, and 
cut into her heart like a knife, her mother would 
take what I can only call a devilish pleasure in 
saying to her ; and she knew exactly how to wound 
her most cruelly; she knew all the little things 
about which her child was most sensitive, and in 
the most tender places she would hurt her as cruelly 
as if she had burnt her with a hot iron. 

You would think that a child, brought up in 
such a way and with such a mother (I say nothing 
about her father, because Prince Leopold rarely 
or never spoke to his daughter), would be a miser- 
able, unhappy, morbid being. But the Princess 
Margarethe was nothing of the kind; except 
when fresh from some unhappy interview with her 

81 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

mother the Princess was usually in the brightest 
and best of spirits. She had, indeed, exceptional 
powers in making the best of unhappy and un- 
toward circumstances. She had, too, the sweetest 
temper I have ever seen in any girl, and when you 
consider the sort of " atmosphere " in which she 
lived this was a really very remarkable thing. The 
whole time I was with the Princess Margarethe 
I cannot recall that she ever once said any- 
thing spiteful or unkind of any one. She never 
even spoke nastily of her mother. She would 
speak, of course, sometimes angrily of her; but I 
never heard her say anything of her mother that 
could be described as spiteful or wicked. 

And all the Princess Leopold's ill-treatment of 
her daughter had not killed in her a wonderfully 
strong and vigorous capacity for enjoyment. 

How dearly the young Princess loved going to a 
ball ! But between her and the attainment of such 
a desire often stood her mother's cruelty and selfish- 
ness and the rigid etiquette of the Prussian Court ; 
by the rules of the latter the young Princess could 
only attend a ball under the chaperonage of either 
her mother or some married Prussian Princess. 
The Princess Leopold detested going to balls ; but 
apart from this, I think, such was her curious nature 
that even had she liked going to them she would have 
refrained from doing so to annoy her daughter. The 
Princess Victoria Margarethe had, therefore, to find 
some other chaperon in place of her mother, and she 

32 



The Princess Margarethe 



went to balls usually under the wing of either the 
Crown Princess or of the Princess August Wilhelm. 

On one occasion the Princess went to a ball, or 
rather a dance, for it was quite a small affair, at- 
tended by Fraulein von Stromberg as her lady-in- 
waiting, but without any other chaperon ; the Kaiser 
heard of this and made a tremendous fuss about it, 
as he always did if any Prussian royalty offended 
in the least degree against the rules of the Court. 

The Princess Margarethe received a letter from 
the Kaiser severely reproving her for the breach 
of etiquette of which she had been guilty. For 
riding out on another occasion without being at- 
tended by a groom the Princess incurred the 
Kaiser's severe wrath, and was warned by the All 
Highest that if she did such a thing again she 
would be placed under arrest. 

Indeed, between the severities of the Prussian 
Court etiquette and the harsh conduct of her own 
parents towards her, the poor Princess did not 
enjoy very much liberty. 

However, as I said, the Princess managed to keep 
up wonderfully cheerful spirits in spite of her de- 
pressing circumstances at home. For one thing, 
everybody that came into contact with her liked 
her (except those strange people, her parents !). 
She loved her young brothers, and they all de- 
lighted in her — they would, indeed, have done 
anything for her and she for them. 

Her other relations, like the Kaiser's family, 
c 33 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

the Saxe-Coburg-Gothas, the Crown Prince and 
Princess of Sweden, and many others, were also very 
fond of her, and they were continually asking her to 
stay with them. She went gladly when she could 
get her parents' consent, but, as I have already said, 
she had often very great difficulty in obtaining it. 

Often the Princess Victoria Luise, however, 
would telephone from the Neues Palais asking her 
young cousin to come over to lunch or to some 
small dinner party the same evening; these were 
the sort of little entertainments the Princess 
Margarethe delighted in; and just because she 
did, it pleased her mother to prevent her going to 
them as often as she dared. I remember on one 
occasion when the Princess was going to lunch 
with the Kaiser and Empress at the Imperial 
Palace at Berlin, the Princess Leopold at the last 
moment told her daughter that she could not 
allow her to have any sort of vehicle to drive her 
anywhere that day; so the Princess, instead of 
driving to Berlin as she had intended to do, had 
to go by train and walk to the railway station that 
was a mile and a half from Klein Glienicke; and 
yet there were carriages and horses idle in the 
stables all that day. 

The carriage horses at Klein Glienicke, by the 
way, were generally supposed to be the best in 
any German Royal household. Most of the horses 
were purchased in England and Ireland. Prince 
Leopold never cared what price he paid for a horse 

34 



The Princess Margarethe 



provided it was the best of the class of animal he 
wanted ; he had a perfect pair of chestnuts for his 
own use that covered the mile and a half between 
Klein Glienicke and the railway station in seven 
minutes. The Princess Margarethe sometimes went 
out driving with her mother, but when her parents 
went out driving together they would never take 
their daughter in the carriage with them. When 
they took their daughter with them to make a 
call somewhere, the young Princess had to go in 
another carriage with Fraulein von Stromberg. 

At first I thought that this arrangement was due to 
some peculiar rule of etiquette at the Prussian Court, 
but it was not. The Kaiser's daughter frequently 
drove in the same carriage with her parents. 

I accompanied the Princess nearly always when 
she went to visit any of her friends or relations. 

The largest and most beautiful of all the Royal 
castles at which we stayed was Gotha, the residence 
of that German Duke who was one of if not 
actually the first person in Germany to throw 
over his English orders after the outbreak of war. 

The Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha is enormously 
wealthy, and is practically a king in his own 
country. Gotha was much the richest and most 
luxurious establishment that I saw in Germany. 
There were servants everywhere about the spacious 
corridors and beautifully furnished rooms. I do 
not know precisely how many guests there were 
present on the first occasion in which I visited 

35 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

Got ha — ^there must have been over a hundred, and 
each had a separate suite of apartments allotted 
to them. The Princess occupied a delightful suite 
of rooms at the western wing of the castle. Nearly- 
all the German Princes and Princesses ^\ith the 
exception of the All Highest and the Empress 
were at this party. The Kaiser's son, Prince 
August Wilhelm and the Princess, who had only 
recently been married, were among the guests. 

One thing that struck me after I had visited 
some of the German Royal establishments was the 
fact that the Kaiser's relatives saw in him a really 
great ruler, and had a considerable fear of him 
mingled with some affection. 

All the Kaiser's worst qualities are quite well 
known to his relatives — his vanity, his boastful- 
ness, his violent and sometimes almost brutal 
temper, but yet there is no doubt that he somehow 
managed to impress upon the lesser German Princes 
and the Grand Dukes that he possessed great 
governing qualities, and was, in fact, a very great 
man — almost as great, indeed, as he claimed to be. 

I remember I was at a big gathering at Gotha 
shortly after the Kaiser had made one of those 
rather warlike speeches with which he liked to 
startle Europe from time to time in pre-war days. 
If I remember right, this particular speech was 
the one in which the Emperor threatened to in- 
corporate Alsace and Lorraine as part of the 
Prussian State, on account of some expressions most 

66 



The Princess Margarethe 



distasteful to the Emperor that had been uttered 
at some poHtical meeting in Lorraine. 

I forget the precise details of the incident, but I 
know the Kaiser's speech was quoted all over 
Germany. The first night that we were at the 
Duke's there was a great banquet, after which the 
Duke proposed the Kaiser's health, and he alluded 
to the speech I have mentioned as an instance of 
how splendidly the Kaiser upheld the honour and 
might of Germany whenever it was slighted in the 
least degree. All the guests drank the Emperor's 
health, standing as they did so and cheering loudly. 

Some Prince or Grand Duke made a speech in 
reply extolling the virtues of his Imperial Lord, 
and describing him as the master of Germany's 
destinies and the maker of her future empire. And 
all this was no mere formal expression of opinion, 
but the confession of a quite genuine faith in the 
greatness of Germany's supreme Lord. 

With one exception every one I met at Gotha 
cherished apparently a profoundly deep admiration 
for the German Emperor. 

This exception was a girl who was in attendance 
on one of the ladies present, and who had formerly 
held much the same position in the entourage of 
the German Empress as I did in the household of 
the Princess Leopold. I was talking one morning 
to her about the wonderful admiration and respect 
that all the Grand Dukes and other royalties had 
for the Kaiser. 

37 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

'' I suppose," I said, " that the Emperor must 
really be a very remarkable and wonderful man." 

" I do not know," was the reply; " I think the 
most wonderful thing about the German Emperor 
is his vanity. You know what your own late King 
said to the Emperor ? " 

I shook my head. 

" Well, when King Edward and Queen Alexandra 
were at Potsdam, on a visit to the Kaiser in 1909, 
the Kaiser was one evening talking to your King 
in his private smoking-room about the great venera- 
tion that the German people had for him. ' To 
them,' said the Emperor solemnly, ' I am a god.' 
' Well, you make a more imposing god in uniform 
than you do in tweeds, Wilhelm ! ' said your King, 
and I heard that the Kaiser never forgot or quite 
forgave the jest." 

This was quite in accordance with the character 
of the Kaiser. 

But to return to the Princess Margarethe. 

At all these visits, however great and important 
the occasion and the gathering, the Princess was 
made a great deal of. The best suite of rooms was 
allotted to her, and the place of honour on the 
right hand of her host at table was nearly always 
hers. 

She enjoyed these great gatherings as frankly 
and thoroughly as a child. Wlien she came into 
her room at night at the end of a day crowded with 
incident she would say to me, " Oh, I have had a 

38 



The Princess Margarethe 



glorious time ! " and then go on to tell me all the 
happenings of the day. 

It did me good to see her so happy and forgetful 
for the moment, at any rate, of the shadows of her 
home life. 

All the fuss that was made about the Princess 
outside her own home never spoiled her in the 
least. I never met a girl so entirely free from 
affectation or conceit as the Princess Margarethe. 
Her absolute naturalness was one of her greatest 
charms, and she was most extraordinarily unselfish. 
I remember during one visit of ours to some great 
house I was knocked up one day with an attack of 
neuralgia; nothing would persuade the Princess 
to leave me that day, and she gave up without a 
thought a picnic expedition which she had been 
eagerly looking forward to. 

I knew her on another occasion to leave a ball to 
go to see a friend whom she knew had been taken 
suddenly ill, and she would often give up going to 
an entertainment to stay at home to look after her 
youngest brother, Prince Leopold, who was delicate 
and rather frequently laid up. 

A common cause of unpleasantness between the 
Princess and her mother was the young Princess's 
attire when going to a ball, or, indeed, to any 
entertainment. 

The young Princess never wore or desired to wear 
a gown that could be reasonably objected to on the 
ground that it was vulgar or in bad taste, or of too 

39 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

advanced a mode. As a Prussian Princess, the 
style in which she attired herself when going to a 
ball was to some extent determined by the rules 
of the Prussian Court on such matters. But these 
rules, strict as they were, still left a good deal to 
the taste and inclination of the individual. The 
Princess Leopold, however, when her daughter 
grew up and began to go to balls and social func- 
tions, would never allow her to gratify her own 
inclination about anything in the matter of dress. 
When the Princess ordered a new evening gown, it 
had to be '' censored " by her mother before she 
could go to any social function in it, and more 
often than not the Princess Leopold would insist 
on alterations in it that would entirely deprive the 
gown of all the original and tasteful effects that the 
young Princess had designed in it. 

Oh, the scenes that would sometimes take place 
after or during discussions between mother and 
daughter on such matters ! I dare say the young 
Princess, when she was forbidden to wear a style 
of gown that she had particularly set her heart on, 
may have lost her temper and expressed her dis- 
appointment to her mother in a manner that was 
not as dutifully filial or submissive as it ought to have 
been. But at the least word of anger or disappoint- 
ment on the part of her daughter the Princess 
Leopold would pour out what I can only describe as 
a perfect torrent of abuse at her, and the poor girl, 
ere it was finished, would rush from the room in tears. 

40 



The Princess Margarethe 



I would scarcely credit the way in which the 
Princess Leopold would seek to annoy her daughter 
only I was in the house and witnessed it. 

I know that the Princess Leopold often ordered 
her daughter to wear a most unbecoming style of 
gown, not in the least because the Princess Leopold 
liked the gown herself, but simply and solely be- 
cause she knew it was unbecoming and that her 
daughter would dislike to wear it. 

Sometimes the young Princess would declare 
that she would not wear the gown of her mother's 
choice, but always in the end she would do so; 
the necessity of rendering obedience — implicit 
obedience — ^to her parents had been instilled into 
the Princess from her earliest years, as it is into 
all members of the Prussian Royal family, and I 
do not think that she would have dared to do 
anything that was in direct violation of her mother's 
commands. The buying of the young Princess's 
wedding trousseau before her marriage with Prince 
Heinrich von Reuss in 1912, was a matter that was 
only finally accomplished after many painful scenes 
between mother and daughter. 

I believe, however, that the differences that 
arose between the young Princess and the Princess 
Leopold at that time were really due to actual 
differences of taste between them, more than to 
any particular desire on the part of the Princess 
Leopold to annoy her daughter. 

The Princess Leopold desired that the young 

41 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

Princess should order everything that was in the 
extreme of fashion and loud and distinctive in 
colour. The young Princess herself had ideas 
rather the reverse of this, and desired that all she 
bought should be simple, neat and not extreme 
modes. These were not only her own ideas on the 
matter, but the opinion of the man she was about 
to marry and whom she wished to please. 

Ultimately the trousseau was purchased, a sort 
of compromise being arrived at between mother 
and daughter. The climax of the disputes between 
them, however, arose on the ordering of the young 
Princess's wedding dress, and in this matter the 
Princess Leopold absolutely insisted on having her 
own way. 

She went to the modiste from whom the gown 
had been ordered and directed a number of altera- 
tions to be made in the already nearly completed 
gown, that had been put in hand at the order of 
the young Princess. 

The modiste objected to make these altera- 
tions, partly on the ground that to carry them 
out would involve very nearly the remaking of the 
whole gown, and most probably result in ruining it. 

A violent dispute took place between the Princess 
and the modiste over the matter, which nearly 
ended in the latter declining to have anything 
further to say to the making of the gown, and I 
have no doubt that the Princess would have 
placed the making of it in other hands only 

42 



The Princess Margarethe 



there was not time to arrange for this to be 
done. 

The Princess Leopold, therefore, on some minor 
points gave in to the modiste, and the latter 
agreed to carry out the desired alterations; this 
very nearly resulted in disaster at the wedding. 

The train of the gown was five and a half yards 
long by two and a half wide, and was composed 
of silver brocade heavily edged with myrtle and 
orange blossom. 

The gown itself, owing to the many alterations 
made in it, became too fragile to bear the weight 
of the immense train, and at the wedding it partly 
tore away from the gown, very nearly becoming 
detached from it completely. 

The train itself w^as the particular choice of the 
Princess Leopold, and it looked really ridiculous. 

The poor Princess Margarethe was intensely 
annoyed at having to wear it, and she could not 
refrain from tears even on her wedding day, when 
it came to putting it on. 

At a great ball given in 1910 by the Crown 
Prince and Princess, the Princess Margarethe had 
for once the gratification of wearing a gown entirely 
of her own choice. I forget how this came about; 
I think her mother must have been away. But 
two incidents happened the night of that ball that 
make me remember it well. It was given the 
night of King Edward's death; the news of the 
King's death reached the Imperial Schloss some- 

43 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

where about midnight, and it was promptly tele- 
phoned to Marmor Palais, where the ball was in 
progress. On hearing the news the Kaiser and 
Empress, who were at the ball, left it after giving 
directions that it should be brought to a close at 
once. The following morning I received news of 
my brother's death in England; although I knew 
he had been ill, the news of his death was a great 
blow; the Princess Margarethe was kindness itself 
to me. Had I desired to go back to England she 
would have made every arrangement for me to do 
so as quickly as possible, but I decided not to. 
The Princess got her own dressmaker to make 
my mourning dress at once, and it was ready the 
next day. People I knew about Potsdam and 
Berlin, who did not know of my brother's death, 
assumed that I was in mourning for King Edward, 
and they all declared that I must be a very loyal 
Englishwoman to wear such deep mourning and 
to have got it so quickly. I was glad that they 
should think so, and indeed it was true. I would 
certainly have gone into mourning even if my 
brother had not died; as things happened, my 
mourning simply did a double duty. 

The Prussian Court went into mourning for 
three weeks, and most English people in Berlin 
wore mourning for three months. It was about 
six months after this that the Princess Leopold 
gave a great ball in Berlin for her daughter, the 
only one she gave during the whole time I was 

44 



The Princess Margarethe 



with her. I do not think that she would have 
given this one, only that great pressure was brought 
on her to do so by the Emperor and Empress, who 
thought that the Princess ought to do much more 
entertaining than she did for the young Princess. 

The ball was certainly well done, and was a very 
grand affair. At all Court balls in Germany the 
floral decorations are a distinctive and pleasing 
feature. The ball-room was simply ablaze with 
blooms; the walls were completely covered with 
roses and carnations, the cost of doing which must 
have run into large figures. 

Each lady at the ball was presented by the 
Princess Leopold with a bag made out of silvered 
lace, in which the recipient placed the bunch of 
flowers presented to her at the cotillon, and which 
she took away with her as a memento of the ball. 

The Kaiser and Empress and all the other Royal 
relations of the Princess were at the ball. The 
Princess Leopold acted her part as hostess quite 
successfully; it must have cost her a considerable 
effort to do so, for it was foreign to her nature for 
her to remain pleasant and bright either in public 
or private for six or seven consecutive hours. She 
wore a gown that had been made for the occasion 
by a London modiste. 

A few days after the dance the young Princess 
went off on an incognito trip to some watering- 
place with Fraulein von Stromberg and myself. 
I enjoyed this sort of trip very much. We stayed 

45 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

at hotels and often met English people. The 
Princess kept very much to herself, and hardly 
ever talked to any one except to her lady-in- 
waiting ; but I was always glad to have a chat with 
any of my own country people that I met. 

On one occasion I remember meeting an English 
clergyman and his wife, when we were staying in 
Switzerland, with whom I became quite friendly. 
When they heard that I was living in Germany 
they earnestly implored me to leave it as soon as 
I possibly could. The clergyman pointed out to 
me that war between England and Germany was 
certain to come before long. He told me that he 
knew Germany very well; that he had many 
friends in Germany and some relatives. " Believe 
me," he said, " Germany has been planning and 
preparing for war with England for the past 
twenty years, and her preparations are now near- 
ing completion; when they are completed she 
will go to war with England; war will probably 
come suddenly on us, and you may find yourself 
in the hands of a very unscrupulous enemy." 

I had heard talk of this kind before in England, 
and had read much in the papers to the same 
effect, and I never paid any attention to it, but 
somehow this clergyman impressed me ; he evidently 
believed what he said, seemed to be very much in 
earnest, and spoke with great conviction. 

I spoke to the Princess Margarethe about what 
he said, and afterwards to other friends of mine 

46 



The Princess Margarethe 



in Potsdam, but none of them appeared to think 
that there was any likehhood of war between 
Germany and ourselves. An officer to whom I 
talked about the subject said, "It is possible that 
in the course of the next five or six years Germany 
may go to war with France, but I could give you 
three good reasons why we are practically certain 
not to have a war with England." 

When I asked him to tell me the reasons, he 
replied : "I think one reason will be enough. It 
would cost us too much to win it." I must say I 
think small blame is to be attached to people in 
England who did believe that there would never 
be war between England and Germany. 

Wherever I went to in Germany I heard practi- 
cally always friendly expressions about England. 
At Klein Glienicke I never heard anything but the 
most friendly expressions about England and 
English people : Princess Leopold herself, if she 
had been free to consult her own wishes, would, I 
think, have lived in England. 

After the outbreak of the war I learned that 
things were not in reality what they had seemed 
to be, and incidents that I took no notice of in the 
days of peace, in view of what I learnt after the 
outbreak of war, assumed more significance. 

But I am certain that the war between England 
and Germany came as a tremendous surprise to 
many people in Germany, and to no one more than 
the Princess Margarethe, who before the outbreak 

47 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 



of war had, of course, become the Princess Reuss. 
When I saw her shortly after the declaration of 
war, she told me that the news of it had come on 
her like a thunder-clap, and that she could even 
then scarcely realize that Germany and England 
were really at war. 

The Princess knew England very well — almost 
as well as her mother. I went over several years 
in succession to England with the young Princess 
and her mother; their visits were always made 
incognito. I shall have more to say about the 
Princess Leopold's visits later. 

When the Princess Margarethe was about fifteen 
her mother took a house at Twickenham for five or 
six months. She stayed there in her usual in- 
cognito — Mrs. Sherenstein. The young Princess 
made several girl friends about Twickenham, one 
of whom afterwards kept up a correspondence with 
her when she returned to Germany. The Twicken- 
ham girl did not know the real identity of her 
German friend, and she addressed her letters to 
Fraulein Margarethe Sherenstein. 

I had some very pleasant incognito trips to 
Wiesbaden with the young Princess. Once, when 
staying there, Lady Margaret Percy was among 
the visitors at our hotel. She was the daughter 
of the Duke of Northumberland, and sister of the 
late Earl Percy. I knew Lady Margaret, of course, 
when I was with the Duchess of Northumberland, 
and we had a very pleasant conversation. 

48 



The Princess Margarethe 



Before travelling anywhere outside Germany 
the Prince and Princess Frederick Leopold and all 
members of their family had to receive the per- 
mission of the Kaiser to do so. 

This rule applies only to Prussian royalties. 
There are two Prussian Royal families, the Kaiser's 
family and the family of Prince Leopold ; the wife 
of a son of the Kaiser becomes a Prussian Princess, 
and so would the wife of a son of Prince Leopold, 
but none of his sons is yet married. 

The wife of a Prussian Prince becomes subject 
to all the rules that, to a large extent, regulate the 
conduct and limit the liberty of Prussian royalties. 

If, however, a Prussian Princess marries outside 
the Prussian family she ceases to be a Prussian, 
and although, from the German point of view, she 
loses in rank she certainly gains in liberty, for she 
is then no longer compelled to obey the rules of the 
Prussian Court, as all Prussian royalties must do. 

When, for example, the Duchess of Connaught, 
who, as a sister of Prince Leopold, was born a 
Prussian Princess, married the Duke of Connaught, 
she ceased to be a Prussian, and the present head 
of the Prussian Royal family in the shape of the 
All Highest ceased to have any authority over her. 

On the other hand, when the Princess Leopold, 
who was a Schleswig-Holstein, married Prince 
Leopold, she became a Prussian Princess, and had 
to acknowledge the supreme authority of the 
Kaiser and to conform to all the rules and restric- 
D 49 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

tions of the Prussian Court. One of these rules 
was, as I have said, that no member of the Prussian 
Royal family could leave Germany without the 
Kaiser's consent. This was no mere formal rule. 
It had to be strictly obeyed, and the Kaiser's con- 
sent definitely obtained. One of the rules that 
the Kaiser's grandfather made after the Franco- 
Prussian war was that no Prussian Princess should 
ever visit Paris, and this rule ever since has been 
strictly enforced. 

The Princess Margarethe, I know, often wanted 
to go to Paris, but she would never have dared to 
have asked the Kaiser's consent to her doing so, 
nor would she ever have dared to have broken the 
rule and to have gone to the French capital without 
his consent. 

I was never able to ascertain precisely what the 
penalty would have been for a Princess who had 
the courage to defy the Emperor, and had broken 
this or any other of the rules imposed on Prussian 
royalties. 

The young Princess seemed simply to think it 
impossible that any Prussian Princess would break 
any rule of the Prussian Court. A lady at the 
Imperial Court, however, told me that a Princess 
who dared to break any rule of the Prussian Court 
would probably be imprisoned for a considerable 
time, and if she went to France would not be 
allowed to return to Germany. This lady also 
volimteered the suggestion that, had she been born 

50 



The Princess Margarethe 



a Prussian Princess, she would have married some 
one who was not a member of the Prussian Royal 
family as speedily as possible, to escape from what 
she confessed she regarded as a very dreadful sort 
of tyranny. This lady appeared to me to have a 
much more acutely developed sense of freedom 
than most people about the Prussian Court, and 
rather less respect for the head of it. Nearly every 
one that I met connected with the Prussian Court, 
either at Klein Glienicke or at the Neues Palais, 
seemed to regard it as something almost sacrosanct, 
beside which all other Courts were things of really 
comparative unimportance. 

Another rule or custom of the Prussian Court 
was that an unmarried Prussian Princess must 
never visit a theatre without the consent of her 
parents, and the Princess Margarethe, who greatly 
liked going to the theatre, found this rule rather 
irksome. 

Before she was allowed to go to a play or to an 
opera it had to be visited first of all by some one 
appointed by her father, and upon the report of 
this critic would depend whether the young Princess 
would be allowed to see it or not. 

I remember when one of Mr. Bernard Shaw's 
plays was presented in Berlin for the first time — 
I forget which one — ^the critic appointed to see it 
by Prince Leopold sent in a criticism that decided 
the Prince not to allow his daughter to see it; 
however, the Princess Leopold went to see it, and 

51 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

she subsequently allowed her daughter to go. The 
criticism of the young Princess on the play was 
that she had never seen so funny a piece before ! 

The Princess Margarethe, before her marriage, 
was the elder of the two unmarried Prussian 
Princesses, and as such she had a rather curious 
duty to perform every year. There was a church 
at Potsdam, the name of which I forget, where ten 
girls were married free of all fees on a certain day 
in the year. The ten brides had to be dressed in 
black, and the weddings had to be celebrated in 
the presence of the Princess Magarethe. The 
money that defrayed the cost of these weddings 
was left for the purpose by some ancestor of the 
Kaiser. It was, I think. Queen Louise, but I am 
not quite sure about this. In the will under which 
this money was bequeathed it was stated that the 
weddings should be celebrated in the presence 
of the eldest unmarried Prussian Princess. The 
Princess Margarethe and the Kaiser's daughter, 
Victoria Luise, were, up to 1913, the only two 
unmarried Prussian Princesses; and the Princess 
Margarethe being the elder of the two, she had to 
attend this rather curious wedding ceremony. I 
often witnessed it; it must have been rather a 
depressing affair for the brides, for they had all to 
be attired in black ; but it was considered a great 
honour for a girl to be married in this way, and 
there were always far more applications for it than 
could be granted. 

52 



CHAPTER III 

THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS LEOPOLD 

I HAVE probably said sufficient already in these 
recollections to indicate that the Prince and Princess 
Leopold were rather peculiar personages. 

The Princess Leopold stands out in my mind 
as one of the most extraordinarily unlovable persons 
that it is possible to imagine, just as her daughter 
remains in my memory, and always will, as the 
very reverse. 

I never had any personal dislike to the Princess 
Leopold, and had no reason for such a thing; she 
treated me well — about many things she behaved 
quite kindly to me, and I never had any serious 
quarrel or difference with her. 

When I arrived at Klein Glienicke she happened 
to be out riding, and directly she returned she 
came to my room, welcomed me most courteously 
to her home, and even apologised for not being 
at home to receive me on my arrival. Nothing 
could have been more delightful and charming 
than she was, but I had not been more than a 
week at Klein Glienicke before I began to per- 
ceive that the Princess Leopold was capable of 
doing very detestable things. 

One day a manservant, who had been in her 

53 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 



employ for a good many years, became ill; he 
had been on late night duty for some weeks, and 
he broke down in health simply as the result of 
overwork and want of proper sleep. The Princess 
accused him, however, of taking some drug to 
make himself ill, in order that he might have some 
holidays at home. 

Later I was told that the Princess always accused 
any one of her dependents who fell ill of making 
themselves ill. 

She was one of the most intolerably suspicious 
sort of women I ever came across. Detectives, 
as I said, were regularly employed at Klein 
Glienicke to watch and spy on any one in the estab- 
lishment ; but apart from this the Princess Leopold 
seemed to suspect every one with whom she came 
much into contact of something — of trying to find 
out about her private affairs, of desiring to culti- 
vate her acquaintance for some special purpose, 
or even of trying to get money out of her. Often, 
without any earthly reason, she would entertain 
the most extraordinary suspicions of the character 
of absolutely blameless people. She accepted as 
being literally true David's hastily uttered state- 
ment about every person being a liar. 

I have heard her say that no one could ever 
deceive her, because she never put the least faith 
in anything that any one, even her own relatives, 
said to her. 

She was a woman devoid of friends. Friends 

54 




PRINCESS LEOPOLD OF PRUSSIA 



The Prince and Princess Leopold 

were the last thing she desired to have. She had 
certainly some extraordinary acquaintances, made 
during her incognito visits to England, with some 
of whom she kept up an occasional correspondence ; 
but I think the pleasure she derived from this 
sort of acquaintance lay in the fact that these 
people had no idea of her identity. Why this 
should please her I do not know, but I am quite 
sure that it did. 

Circumstances had, I think, embittered the whole 
character and disposition of the Princess, and for 
those unhappy circumstances she was not to blame. 

Before her marriage, from all I heard, the 
Princess liCopold was a jolly, bright and happy 
young girl. 

She loved the man she married — of that I am 
sure ; from a social point of view the marriage was 
certainly a splendid one for her. She was but 
the daughter of quite a minor Royal house, whilst 
the Prince Leopold was a great Prussian Prince, 
ranking after the Emperor. The two Schleswig- 
Holstein sisters were regarded, indeed, as having 
accomplished something very remarkable when 
one married the heir to the German throne and 
the other the next most important Prince in 
Germany. 

But very soon after her marriage the Princess 
Leopold made the discovery that the man she 
loved, and whom she believed loved her when 
they married, loved another woman. That other 

55 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

woman was the Kaiser's sister, who married the 
Prince Charles of Hesse. 

Had this been all, the Princess Leopold's married 
life might not have been so unhappy ; the discovery- 
she had made would certainly have embittered 
a woman of her disposition, but time would have 
enabled her to get over the cruel pain and mortifica- 
tion that she suffered in her early married days. 
But the Princess soon found out that not only had 
her husband loved another woman when he married 
her, but that he regarded her with absolute dislike, 
and, to make matters worse, the Princess had not 
been married long before she saw how utterly she 
had been deceived about the character and disposi- 
tion of her husband. 

Prince Leopold, I have no doubt, appeared to the 
Princess when she first met him as quite a perfect 
Prince Charming. The Prince in his younger days 
was, at least, passably handsome. His manners, 
if reserved, were courtly, and he was exceedingly 
well dressed. In the Princess's company he was 
habitually rather silent, but to a girl very ready 
to fall in love this was no great fault : if she did 
not find him amusing, she probably thought him 
extremely interesting. 

I heard some one say once, who knew Prince 
Leopold intimately, that his father, the Red Prince, 
Charles Frederick of Prussia, had beaten every- 
thing out of his son except his morose and brutal 
temper. 

56 



The Prince and Princess Leopold 

It was not very long before the Princess Leopold 
discovered that she had married a man bereft of 
all and every quality that could inspire affection 
or respect. The Prince was without courage, 
almost without intelligence, and his eccentricities 
made him the laughing-stock of every one brought 
into close contact with him. Yet had he cared 
about his wife, had he shown her any affection, 
had he even refrained from displaying an active 
dislike towards her, I think she could have found 
happiness with him. 

As it was, the Prince in his moments of temper 
treated her brutally, and habitually made no effort 
to conceal from her the fact that he despised her. 

When one considers what the married life of the 
Princess Leopold was, the brutality of her husband, 
and the cruel destruction of all her romantic dreams, 
when she was about to become a Prussian Princess, 
one can excuse much she did ; indeed, I, who knew 
her so well, could excuse any bad and spiteful thing 
I ever saw or heard of her doing, except her treat- 
ment of her daughter — ^that, to my mind, was 
unpardonable. 

How the Prince and Princess Leopold managed 
to live together under the same roof was, to me, 
always one of the most puzzling things about 
these extraordinary people; yet they not only 
did so, but they occupied the same apartments, 
and were rarely separated from each other year in 
and year out, for more than a month or so. Perhaps 

57 



i 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

it was that they both took a pleasure in witnessing 
the extreme distaste each had for the society of 
the other. I don't know. I am quite sure that 
more ordinary individuals would have parted from 
each other had they at all the same reason for doing 
so as had the Leopolds. 

Scenes between them were commonplace inci- 
dents of their lives. The worst and most memorable 
of these occurred a year or so after the birth of 
their first child. I was given all the particulars 
of this incident by a lady who was at Klein Glienicke 
when it happened. Great efforts were made by 
the Kaiser to keep the whole affair secret, and any 
reference to it was rigorously forbidden and sup- 
pressed in the German press. 

No news of the incident was allowed to be sent 
out by the foreign newspaper correspondents from 
Berlin, but some time after it occurred some 
accounts of it found their way into some of the 
English, French and American papers; but these 
were rather inaccurate. 

The incident took place in January, during a 
severe frost. The Princess Leopold went with a 
lady-in-waiting to skate on the Havel in one of 
the Royal parks. 

I am not quite certain whether her husband had 
forbidden her to do so, or whether she went without 
asking his permission. I think she must have 
done the latter. 

At any rate, after she had been on the lake 

58 



The Prince and Princess Leopold 

about an hour the ice cracked at a place over which 
she was skating, with the result that the Princess 
fell into the water and was only rescued with 

difficulty. 

When she was taken out of the water she was 
driven home, and she went to bed at once; all 
precautions were taken to avoid the possibility 
of dangerous results from her accident. Prince 
Leopold was out at some military exercises when 
the Princess came back from the lake ; he returned 
about an hour later, and was informed about the 
incident by his chief valet. 

The Prince on hearing it flew into a most 
fearful rage, and rushed off to his wife's bedroom, 
into which he burst, and poured out at her the most 
violent torrent of abuse. 

He accused her of having gone to skate against 
his express orders, of having done so for the purpose 
of getting him into trouble with the Kaiser, and 
ended up by taking the military helmet he was 
w^earing off his head and flinging it at the Princess. 
The helmet struck her in the face and cut her left 
temple and mouth severely; but the Prince's 
wrath was far from satisfied. He continued to 
abuse his wife at the top of his voice, accused her 
of having married him for his money, and of being 
a mere pauper utterly beneath him, and finally 
began beating her with all his strength with the 
stock of his riding-whip. All this happened in a 
few minutes. When the Prince began beating his 

59 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

wife, one of the Princess's maids, the most courage- 
ous of her suite, apparently, rushed into the room 
to help the Princess; the Prince then turned on 
the maid, seized her by the hair, dragged her out 
of the room, and, after having struck her several 
times, went off to his own study, warning every 
one about him not to interfere with him or to go 
near the Princess. 

In the meanwhile, news of the accident had 
reached the Neues Palais, and the Empress at once 
drove over to Klein Glienicke to see her sister. 
She was, however, informed by a servant on her 
arrival that the Princess would see no one. The 
Empress, however, declined to take this answer, 
and insisted on going upstairs to the Princess's 
rooms, the door of which she had to have broken 
open to gain admittance. 

She found her sister in a state of collapse. The 
Empress was terribly shocked. She had, of course, 
some idea of the sort of relations that existed 
between her sister and her husband; but her 
unfortunate sister's condition was evidence of a 
much more terrible state of affairs than the Empress 
imagined could possible exist. 

After the Empress had done all she could for the 
Princess, she sent for the Kaiser, who, after he 
had learned the details of the occurrence, at once 
put the Prince under arrest, and deprived him of 
the command of his regiment. The Kaiser and 
Empress subsequently had a long private con- 

60 



The Prince and Princess Leopold 



versation with the Prince. After the Emperor left 
Klein Glienicke two soldiers and an officer arrived. 
The officer ordered the Prince to go to his private 
study, and there he was kept prisoner for, I think, 
three weeks ; the door of the room was guarded the 
whole time by two sentries with fixed bayonets. 

This incident created the greatest excitement 
at the Prussian Court. The Kaiser and Empress 
were furious with the Prince ; but I rather imagine 
that the Kaiser's anger was due in part, at any rate, 
to the scandal that the occurrence had given rise 
to at the Court, and the impossibility of keeping it 
secret. It was talked about and discussed every- 
where, and every one wondered what would be the 
ultimate outcome of it, for it seemed impossible 
to imagine that the Leopolds could continue to live 
together. Yet they did — and harsh, severe and 
often cruel to his wife as the Prince Leopold was 
afterwards, he never dared a second time to treat 
her as he did on that occasion. He never again 
struck her, because he knew if he did the result 
would certainly be that he would have to leave 
Germany. That, I believe, was made quite plain 
to him at the interview he had with the Kaiser 
and Empress. 

I rather doubt if the Prince was wholly respon- 
sible for his actions. I have often thought that the 
Princess herself felt that he was not, and that it 
was her duty to remain with him and look after 
him — ^that she did so is to her credit, and if years 

61 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

spent in the performance of such duty made the 
Princess eccentric, it is not a matter of wonder. 

The Prince's intense dishke to seeing visitors, 
or to being seen by strangers, was evidence that 
mentally he was not quite normal. 

So great was his desire for privacy that he built 
a high wall round the grounds at Klein Glienicke, 
so that he might be sure of being hidden from the 
eyes of his tenants and the villagers about Glienicke. 

The only occasion on which his own people ever 
saw him was when he drove out in his carriage 
or motor — but if they had never seen him it would 
not have troubled them much, for both he and the 
Princess Leopold were as unpopular as they well 
could be among their own people. 

Some of the Prince's eccentricities were rather 
amusing. He was inordinately fond of clothes, 
and kept a wardrobe-room full of suits that he 
rarely or never wore ; but they all had to be kept 
brushed, ironed, and ready for wear at any moment, 
for he might take it into his head to wear some 
particular suit, and it had to be ready for him to 
put on directly he asked for it. He kept five valets, 
who were kept fairly busy looking after the Prince's 
clothes, and an infinite number of pairs of boots, 
every one of which had to be kept well polished. 
His boots alone filled a large room, and it took 
the greater part of the time of two of his valets 
to look after* them. I believe he kept 1,500 pairs 
of boots always ready for wear. Sometimes the 

62 



The Prince and Princess Leopold 

Prince would go in and have a look at his boots, 
and if he thought that any pair was not properly 
polished his valets would have a bad time of it. 
There were six rows of top-boots fitted with silver- 
plated spurs, and the spurs had always to be 
glittering and bright. 

The ordering of a new suit of clothes was made 
a most ceremonious performance by the Prince. 
He never, of course, entered a tailor's shop, but 
he would have his tailor down to him, and spend 
about half a day selecting clothes from various 
patterns. He generally w^ould order half-a-dozen 
suits at a time, or more, and when they were brought 
to him to be tried on he would have a couple of his 
equerries in the room, who had most minute direc- 
tions to watch the tailor carefully when he was 
cutting away threads from the clothes — ^the Prince 
had a nervous horror of letting any one approach 
him with any sort of weapon, even with a pair of 
scissors. 

The Prince had an extraordinarily nervous dread 
lest some one might break into his private apart- 
ments at night. To guard against this danger 
he had heavy iron sliding shutters put up at his 
bed- and dressing-room windows. These shutters 
had to be closed and locked every night, and the 
key left in his bedroom. 

The Prince, as I said, simply abhorred having 
visitors at Klein Glienicke or going to any social 
function. Indeed, he never went anywhere except 

63 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

to the functions at the Imperial Palace in Berlin 
or at the Neues Palais, which he was compelled 
by the rules of the Prussian Court to attend. He 
had, for example, to go to the Imperial Palace in 
Berlin on the first of January to bid the Kaiser 
a happy New Year. This was a most imposing 
function, and was attended by all the Kaiser's 
relatives and the chief representatives of the Army 
and Navy. 

It was at this function that the Kaiser, on the 
New Year's Day of 1914, told his assembled 
courtiers, relatives and naval and military officers, 
that the German Eagle hovered over the world 
ready instantly to strike at any of the birds of 
prey who might seek to attack her. Before another 
twelve months had gone by the eagle had struck, 
but we all know now for what purpose the bird 
had been hovering over the world for so long a 
time. 

To return to the Prince Leopold. When he 
went to any function of this sort at Berlin he would 
take a small van load of uniforms and his five valets 
to his Schloss in Berlin, where he would dress for 
the Court. He would try on at least half-a-dozen 
uniforms, and it was only after lengthy consulta- 
tions with mirrors and his valets that he would 
finally decide upon the particular uniform he would 
wear. 

The Leopolds, by the way, never used their 
Schloss in Berlin for any other purpose than for 

64 



The Prince and Princess Leopold 

dressing for functions at the Court — none of them 
ever slept in it. 

The Prince detested attending Court, and as 
often as he dared he would try to get out of doing 
so by feigning illness. 

I have known him, when he heard that there 
was to be a dinner party at the Neues Palais, to 
go to bed and stay there, pretending he was ill 
until the dinner party was over ; by going to bed 
a few days before the party, he thought that his 
illness would not have the appearance of being 
feigned for the purpose of escaping the duty of 
accepting his cousin's hospitality. The worst thing 
about this plan, however, was that it kept the Prince 
confined to his rooms perhaps for a week — a thing 
he disliked almost as much as attending a Court 
banquet. 

The Princess Leopold also greatly disliked attend- 
ing Court functions, but she wxnt more into society 
than her husband, who outside the Court enter- 
tainments resolutely refused to go anywhere. When 
the Princess Leopold did attend a ball, it was her 
custom to wait until her husband had gone to bed 
before going out. How annoying this was to her 
daughter can be readily imagined ; for if the Prince 
took it into his head to remain up until midnight, 
it meant keeping his daughter very late for the ball, 
to which they might have to drive several miles. 
However, as I said, the Princess Leopold only 
rarely took the young Princess to a ball, which, 
E 65 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

under existing circumstances, was perhaps in some 
ways rather a lucky thing for her. 

Oh, the dulness of Prince Leopold's life ! Could 
any normally-minded man have stood it ? I 
doubt it. Practically he did the same things day 
in day out throughout the year. 

He would rise at eight o'clock and breakfast in 
his dressing-room. He would lunch at the rather 
early hour of eleven; the regular lunch hour at 
Klein Glienicke was 12.30. Then he would go for 
a drive in his carriage or motor for about two hours. 
Afterwards he would walk about the gardens, or go 
for a drive with his wife. Then would come after- 
noon tea, another walk or drive, and, finally, dinner 
and bed somewhere between ten and midnight; 
but the Prince always retired to his private rooms 
at ten o'clock. 

A couple of years before the war Prince Leopold 
took it into his head to go in for farming. He 
started operations with about one hundred acres; 
his part in the operations consisted in walking about 
the farm for an hour or so in the morning and 
evening, but he left the whole management of the 
farm in the hands of a steward. 

It used to amuse me sometimes to see the Prince 
and Princess going out for a drive together. The 
Prince would come through the hall, never looking 
to the right or left, and behind him would follow 
his wife. The Prince would walk straight into the 
carriage, take the right seat, and the Princess 

66 



The Prince and Princess Leopold 

would meekly enter after him. When alighting 
from the carriage, the Prince would always leave 
it first — he was extremely particular always to 
take precedence of his wife, and she never thought 
of disputing his right to do so on the score of 
good manners, nor did she ever keep him waiting 
for a moment when they had arranged to go any- 
where together. Her submissiveness to her husband 
was not, I am sure, prompted by any feeling of 
fear of him. The Princess Leopold was by no 
means a timid woman; she had certainly a vastly 
more courageous nature than her husband. She 
was submissive to him because she thought it 
her duty to be so. Indeed, the relations of the 
Leopolds to one another were of the most extra- 
ordinary kind when one considers the character 
and disposition of each and of their feelings towards 
one another. 

The Prince hated his wife; she must have hated 
him — more, she must have despised him; yet had 
she loved him and he her, she could not have 
devoted herself more to him than she did. 

The feelings that the Leopolds had towards each 
other were such as one might have supposed would 
have led each to seek consolation and happiness 
outside their home. 

The Princess was a handsome woman; she was 
a good horsewoman; she sang and played well, 
and when she exerted herself her manners could 
be attractive and pleasant. The Princess, had 

67 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

she chosen to do so, could certainly have found 
agreeable distraction from her unhappy home 
life. And so I dare say could the Prince, for 
wretched being as he was he had great position 
and wealth. 

But such ideas never, I am sure, even occurred 
to these two strange people. 

The Prince, on the contrary, desired to have the 
Princess constantly about him; sometimes the 
two would remain in a room together for hours 
without exchanging a word with one another, and 
when they did at length open their lips it was 
often to exchange some remarks that at once led 
to a quarrel. 

Once a year in August the Prince Leopold 
attended Military Manoeuvres. The Prince, of 
course, as a Prussian Prince, was in the army 
and held quite a high command. But for a good 
many years the only military exercises or duty 
of any sort that he ever attended were the army 
manoeuvres. 

When war broke out, however, he took up his 
command, and went off to the front, accompanied 
by doctors, a travelling kitchen, and a small 
retinue of cooks, valets and general handy men. 
The Germans have no sense of humour, or other- 
wise the idea of the Prince going to the front in the 
capacity of a general and the mode of his departure 
would have profoundly amused them. 

When the Prince went off on manoeuvres his wife, 

68 



The Prince and Princess Leopold 

and generally his daughter, went to England for 
a month. This was the only time in the year 
that the Leopolds were separated. To make this 
journey the Princess Leopold had not only to 
obtain the Kaiser's consent, but her husband's 
also. The latter, I believe, never refused his 
permission ; but it had to be obtained, and it was 
granted conditionally on the Princess's being back 
at Klein Glienicke by a certain date. No engage- 
ment must, on any account, ever detain the Princess 
from her home beyond that date ; had she let any 
engagement do so, it would probably have meant 
that the Princess would not have been again per- 
mitted to take her annual holiday outside of 
Germany, at all events. 

The birthdays of the Leopolds and their children 
were celebrated by a military band performance 
in the courtyard, lasting exactly an hour. It was 
not a very exciting celebration ceremony, but I 
must say the bands were very good, and the music 
was delightful to listen to. 

Sometimes they played English music, but not 
often. The Princess Leopold liked Sullivan's 
music, and it brought me to home days when I 
heard the band play a selection from the ' ' Yeomen 
of the Guard," which the Princess Leopold thought 
was the best of the Sullivan operas. 

On the birthday of each of the children one band 
performed; on their mother's birthday two bands, 
and the birthday of the Prince was celebrated by 

69 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

a performance of three bands. Thus was the 
dignity of this great Prince maintained in his 
home. 

In 1914 the Prince and Princess celebrated their 
silver wedding, but the celebrations were more or 
less a failure. They really did nothing more than 
demonstrate the intense dislike with which the 
Prince and Princess were regarded by their own 
people in Glienicke village and on the Royal estate. 

None of the villagers would join in any of the 
festivities which were arranged, and they had to 
be abandoned. One address of congratulation 
was wrung with reluctance from some of the 
Prince's immediate dependents, but that was the 
only notice that was taken of the event by the 
Prince's own people. 

But I do not think that the Prince and Princess 
were troubled by this evidence of their unpopu- 
larity on their own estate. 

They knew they were disliked, and they never 
attempted to win the affection or even respect 
of any of the people about them. 

In honour of his cousin's silver wedding, the 
Kaiser bestowed on the Countess Schwxrin, the 
Mistress of the Robes to the Princess Leopold, 
the title of Excellence. It was very character- 
istic of the Princess that this should displease her. 
The Countess had been for years with the Princess 
and had served her patiently, and even affection- 
ately. The Princess Leopold could not possibly 

70 



The Prince and Princess Leopold 

have had any reason to object to the bestowal of 
this title on her lady-in-waiting; indeed, it really 
was as much an act of courtesy and graciousness 
towards her by the Kaiser as it was towards the 
Countess Schwerin. Yet such was the peculiar 
character of the Princess, that she could not accept 
it as such; she not only never addressed the 
Countess by her new dignity, but she even dis- 
couraged her servants from doing so. 

As for the Countess, the non-recognition of her 
title troubled her very little, but the Princess, no 
doubt, found some pleasure in the thought that 
it did. 

Once a year the Prince and Princess Leopold 
would go to some place in Austria for two or three 
weeks' shooting in October or November. I was 
with them when they were at St. Wolfgang in 1913 
on the occasion of the Prince's birthday. 

The people there, partly, perhaps, because they 
did not know the Prince as well as those on his own 
estate did, and partly because they wanted to have 
some merriment among themselves, organized a 
celebration festival. The Prince heard of these 
doings, and he allowed the preparations to proceed, 
on which the people spent a great deal of money. 
However, the day before his birthday the Prince 
announced that he could not permit a public cele- 
bration of his birthday to take place. The people 
were, of course, terribly disappointed; they sent 
a deputation to the Prince to ask him to recon- 

71 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 



sider his decision and to allow the celebrations, 
that had been organized with so much trouble and 
at so much expense, to be held. The Prince, how- 
ever, remained obdurate — he would not even receive 
the deputation, but sent them a message to say he 
had come to the place for rest and quiet. 

The disappointment of the people gave much 
quiet enjoyment to the Prince and Princess. 

The chief out-door amusement of the Princess 
Leopold was lawn tennis, which she played fairly 
well. 

She played chiefly with the Prince's equerries 
and her own ladies-in-waiting : sometimes she 
would ask a few guests to play in the afternoon, 
but not often, on account of the violent dislike 
the Prince had to visitors coming to Klein 
Glienicke. 

There were two good tennis courts at Klein 
Glienicke, round which some powerful electric 
lamps were erected, so that the Princess could play 
on after the daylight had faded. 

Among the occasional guests to Klein Glienicke 
was an officer, who was a first-rate player. I 
believe he was made a prisoner early in the war 
by us. I was told that this officer knew England 
very well, and I heard had many friends there. 

Almost from my first day at Klein Glienicke I 
was struck by a certain atmosphere of mystery 
that prevailed at it that was never wholly dispelled. 
Members of the household would be dispatched on 

72 



The Prince and Princess Leopold 



errands of apparently considerable mystery. For 
example, one of the Prince's equerries would some- 
times depart for a couple of days, whither no one 
apparently knew, or, if any one did, kept the place 
a profound secret, and after his return he would 
have a prolonged interview with the Prince. The 
Baroness Knesebeck also would sometimes go on 
similar strange errands for the Princess, the nature 
of which was kept a closely guarded secret. 

Then, too, the secrecy of the correspondence of 
the Prince and Princess was guarded with the most 
extraordinary care. 

Until I came to have charge of some of Princess 
Leopold's correspondence, I never even saw an 
envelope directed to her. The envelopes were 
invariably destroyed directly the letters were 
opened. 

The Baroness Knesebeck acted as secretary to 
the Princess, but there were letters that the Princess 
would permit no one to see. This was, of course, 
quite a natural thing, but the Princess took more 
than ordinary trouble to safeguard the secrecy of 
such letters. She would carry them about in a 
special pocket she had made in each of her dresses 
for this purpose, until she destroyed the letters. 
I remember, on one occasion, the Princess was 
greatly disturbed because she thought she had 
dropped one of the letters which she was carrying 
about with her. She spent the whole afternoon 
searching for it in one of the gardens where she 

73 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

had been sitting. I do not know whether she 
found the letter, but I suppose she did, as we heard 
no more about it. 

In later days, after the outbreak of war, I began 
to think that possibly the Princess Leopold might 
have been engaged in doing occasional work in the 
German Secret Service. She was not the sort of 
person who would have undertaken any very 
important work of that sort, such as would have 
given her a great deal of trouble or occupied much 
of her time; but she quite possibly might have 
assisted in some way in those subterranean plot- 
tings and plannings on the part of the Kaiser and 
his advisers, which were being very actively carried 
on all over the world during the seven years I was 
at Potsdam. 

The year after I arrived at Potsdam Prince von 
Billow retired and Dr. Bethmann-Hollweg was 
appointed Chancellor. This event marked the be- 
ginning of many changes in the Imperial entourage. 
Persons who had been years in the Kaiser's house- 
hold were retired, and their places filled by people 
in sympathy with the German idea of World 
Empire. 

I remember one morning a lady, who had been 
retired from the Imperial household, came to see 
the Princess Leopold, and in talking about the 
changes that were being made in the Kaiser's 
household, she said : "I really think that all 
these changes mean that there is going to be 

74 



The Prince and Princess Leopold 

trouble. Now that the Prince (Prince Biilow) is 
gone, there is no one to say ' No ' to the Emperor. 
Trouble is sure to come before long." 

What the nature of this coming trouble was I 
had not the least idea, and I did not at all under- 
stand what the lady meant. It was not until after 
the war that I came to see the possible significance 
of certain events, and of things I saw or heard, to 
which at the time I paid little or no attention. 

If I suggest that the Princess Leopold did any 
work for the German Secret Service ; if, in fact, 
she played the part of a spy, it must be remembered 
that she only did what the Kaiser and many other 
German royalties and hundreds of other high- 
born German people had been doing for years 
before the war. 

If the Princess did act as a spy during her incog- 
nito visits to England, she, therefore, did what, 
according to the standard of honour of her own class, 
was a perfectly right and justifiable thing to do. 

Much has been written about the German spy 
system, and I am not going to dwell on it, for, 
personally, I know little or nothing about the 
subject. But here are two stories told to me on 
good authority in connection with the German 
system of spying. One relates to the Princess 
Leopold, the other to a member of the Kaiser's 
household. 

The first incident happened when the Prince and 
Princess Leopold were in England in the summer 

75 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

of 1913, at a time when a number of other German 
royalties stayed in England, about whose doings 
I shall have more to say later. 

The Princess was by herself in London, her 
husband having gone on a mysterious visit by 
himself to Clifton. 

The Princess received a telegram to meet a lady 
at a West End hotel at four o'clock on a certain 
afternoon. The telegram came from Potsdam. 
The Princess went to the hotel and had an inter- 
view with the lady, which lasted about an hour. 
The following day the Princess went to Little- 
hampton. Three days later the Princess received 
a telegram, which apparently contained quite an 
innocent message : " G is gone," it ran. 

Simple as the message was, it had a very disturb- 
ing effect on the Princess. She left Littlehampton 
at once for London, and returned to Germany two 
days later. The most significant part of this inci- 
dent was that, according to my informant, the 
husband of the lady whom the Princess had gone 
to see in London was shortly afterwards arrested 
for espionage in England. 

The other story related to a Captain D , an 

officer in the Imperial household. This gentle- 
man, when the Kaiser went to stay at Windsor 
Castle in 1911, accompanied his Royal master, not 
as an equerry, but as a manservant. He went as 
a spy, and assumed the role of a servant for that 
purpose in order, I suppose, to conduct more 

76 



The Prince and Princess Leopold 

readily the inquiries he desired to make. When I 
heard of this incident, I said to the gentleman who 
told me of it : " Well, all I can say is, that that is 
the sort of thing that you would never get an 
English gentleman to do." 

My informant could not understand me. " Why 
not?" he replied; "I suppose English gentlemen 
are not as patriotic as German gentlemen," he 
suggested. 

Another mysterious thing about affairs at Klein 
Glienicke was that the year before the young 
Princess's marriage the relations between her and 
her mother, bad as they had been, became sud- 
denly even worse. Why this was so I could never 
quite understand, for friendly and intimate as the 
relations between the Princess Margarethe and 
myself had become, she never threw any light on 
this matter. 

So bad, indeed, did matters become between the 
Princess and her daughter, that I do not think 
they could have continued to live under the same 
roof much longer; had not the young Princess 
become engaged to be married, she would, I think, 
have had to go to live with one of her relatives. 

The Christmas before her engagement took place 
the Princess Margarethe made a great effort to 
come to some better understanding with her 
mother. She went to her mother's rooms on 
Christmas Eve to give her a present and to wish 
her a happy Christmas. The two had a long talk, 

77 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

but the outcome of it was that the young Princess 
came to my room afterwards crying bitterly. She 
was almost hysterical, and in a very highly wrought 
condition. I do not know exactly what had taken 
place between the Princess and her mother; all 
the young Princess said to me was : "It is quite 
hopeless — quite hopeless. Mother does not want 
me here at all." I think one of the causes of the 
increased trouble between the Princess Leopold 
and her daughter was that the former was growing 
jealous of the young Princess. 

The Princess Margarethe's great popularity at 
the Imperial Court, in general society, and, above 
all, with the tenants and villagers at Glienicke, 
who worshipped the very ground she trod on, 
beyond doubt made her mother jealous of her; 
and this feeling of jealousy developed as the 
Princess grew older and her popularity became 
more and more marked, whilst the dislike in which 
her mother was held became everywhere more 
in evidence. 

The young Princess was a constant visitor to 
the cottagers about the estate. Often when one 
of them was ill she would go off into Potsdam and 
buy them anything they might require, such as 
jelly or fruit, and bring them to the invalids her- 
self. Her mother could not actually forbid her 
daughter to do such kind acts — she would have 
done so if she had dared; but she never gave the 
young Princess one word of encouragement to do 

78 



The Prince and Princess Leopold 

such things. On the contrary, her mother's black 
looks were the young Princess's usual greeting 
after returning from her visits to the cottagers. 

The Princess's popularity in the social world, 
too, intensified her mother's dislike towards her. 
The Princess Margarethe was often asked to repre- 
sent the German Empress at various social func- 
tions, at which the Empress could not be present 
in person. Whenever this happened, the Princess 
Leopold nearly always had some difference with 
her daughter. She would even accuse her of 
trying to take her mother's place, and of forcing 
herself into social prominence in order to slight 
her mother. I remember, on one occasion, when 
the Princess Margarethe was going into Berlin to 
represent the German Empress at a concert, her 
mother said something to her to this effect. The 
interview between mother and daughter ended, 
as usual, in tears, the Princess Margarethe declaring 
that she would not go to the concert. But the 
Princess Leopold would not have dared to have 
interfered with her daughter keeping an engage- 
ment of this sort, which was made for her bv the 
Empress; to have done so would have got the 
Princess Leopold into trouble at the Neues Palais, 
and the Princess was ever careful to avoid having 
any serious differences with the Empress. She 
made the young Princess go to the concert, but 
she had the gratification of knowing that the 
Princess went there with a sad and aching heart. 

79 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

I think the Princess Leopold sometimes hoped that 
bad relations would arise between her own daughter 
and the Princess Victoria Luise, and that the latter 
would become jealous of the attention that her 
cousin attracted. Had such a thing happened, it 
would undoubtedly have made the position of the 
Princess Margarethe unpleasant, for Victoria Luise 
could have found many ways and means of slight- 
ing her cousin. But, as a matter of fact, the two 
young Princesses were the very best of friends, 
which is something to the credit of the Kaiser's 
daughter, for her cousin was, beyond doubt, the 
best-looking and attracted more admiration. 

Often the two went to dances together. On one 
occasion the Princess Margarethe monopolized the 
attentions of a certain young officer for the greater 
part of the evening, which the Princess Victoria 
Luise had rather hoped would be devoted to her. 

This, of course, happened at a small dance. At 
large balls the partners for the two Prussian 
Princesses were determined by rules of precedence 
and etiquette, and neither of them on such occa- 
sions ever danced with a man outside Royal rank, 
or who was not, at all events, of very high estate, 
and never danced more than once with the same 
partner. But the Princess Victoria Luise had a 
real and genuine affection for her cousin, and so 
far from being jealous of her was pleased at the 
admiration accorded to her. 

One reason of the friendship between the two 

80 



The Prince and Princess Leopold 

was, I dare say, that the Princess Victoria Luise's 
own home life was not altogether free from trouble, 
though her unhappiness was not to be compared 
with that of her cousin ; but it proceeded from the 
same cause — I mean, that the Empress was not 
very fond of her, and thus there was a sort of bond 
of sympathy between the two Princesses. The 
Kaiser, however, simply idolized his daughter; 
she was, beyond all doubt, his favourite child. I 
once heard a member of the Imperial household, 
talking of the place which the Kaiser's various 
children occupied in his affection, say : " It is 
Victoria Luise first — the rest nowhere." 

The poor Princess Margarethe had the affection 
of neither father nor mother. 



81 



CHAPTER IV 

INCOGNITO VISITS TO ENGLAND 

The Princess Leopold's incognito visits to 
England were the events in her life that she most 
enjoyed. For the month or so that she stayed 
in England she enjoyed complete liberty — she could 
go where she liked, stay where she liked, behave 
as she liked, without fear of being called to account 
by her husband or of offending against any rule 
of the Prussian Court. 

She travelled strictly incognito. She was accom- 
panied, as a rule, by the Baroness Knesebeck and 
Fraulein von Stromberg, four or five footmen, and 
a few maidservants. 

I usually took my holiday at the same time, and 
travelled with the Princess to England, afterwards 
joining her wherever she might be and returning 
to Germany with her. 

Her daughter used to style her mother's rather 
considerable suite of attendants " The Noah's 
Ark." Why the Princess Leopold chose to travel 
with so large a suite I never could understand. It 
added enormously to the cost of the trip, and 
entailed the making of many arrangements that 
the Princess must have found troublesome. She 
could have managed quite comfortably with two 

82 



Incognito Visits to England 

or three attendants, but it pleased her better, 
apparently, to travel with her " Noah's Ark." 

When in London she would stay at a first-class 
hotel in the West End, where she would engage 
a whole floor to herself and her suite, but when 
she went to seaside places like Littlehampton or 
Exmouth she made very curious arrangements 
with a view to preserving the secrecy of her incog- 
nito. She had a perfect horror lest her real identity 
should become known — t. fear that often marred 
the enjoyment of her holiday. 

When she went to the seaside she always stayed 
in third-rate lodgings with some attendant, whilst 
her suite were put up at the best hotel in the 
place. 

When I was with her at Littlehampton in 1910 
she was greatly disturbed and upset by the manner 
in which her strictly guarded incognito was dis- 
covered. A big firm in London from whom the 
Princess used to buy goods heard in some way 
that we were at Littlehampton. I corresponded 
with this firm on behalf of the Princess in my own 
name, and they sent a circular addressed " Care 
of H.R.H. the Princess Leopold of Prussia." The 
sending of this unfortunate circular gave the 
Princess's incognito away, and a paragraph appeared 
in a local paper the next day to the effect that a 
sister of the German Empress was a visitor at 
Littlehampton. 

The Princess was furious. She told me that 

83 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

the discovery of her identity might have serious 
consequences for her, and that she would have to 
leave England at once; but apparently the serious 
consequences, whatever they might have been, did 
not materialize, and the Princess, though she left 
Littlehampton, remained in England. 

The Princess and her entourage made a curious 
spectacle when they were all gathered together 
on the sands at some place like liittlehampton or 
Exmouth. The Princess would be attired in one 
of her oldest gowns ; with her would be the Fraulein 
von Stromberg, the Baroness Knesebeck in their 
smartest dresses, and about them would be grouped 
a crowd of menservants and maids. 

On one occasion I heard some people discussing 
us when we were all out on the sands at Little- 
hampton. The conclusion they arrived at was 
that we were a theatrical party. I wonder what 
they would have thought if they had known that 
the leading lady was a sister of the German Empress, 
and nearly related by marriage with King George. 

The Princess during these incognito visits to 
England would pick up curious stray acquaintances. 
On one occasion she met a lady — at Exmouth, I 
think it was — w^ho frankly told the Princess that 
she never trusted Germans, and thai she was sure 
that the Princess was not in England for any good 
purpose. 

The Princess, as a matter of fact, did not run much 
risk of her nationality being discovered by her 

84 



Incognito Visits to England 

accent, for she spoke English perfectly and without 
a trace of a foreign accent; but often she would 
tell the people she met when staying in apartments 
or at hotels that she was a German. 

One great source of enjoyment to the Princess 
Leopold when she was in England was bicycling — 
a pastime that by the rules of the Prussian Court 
was denied to her in Germany except in the private 
Royal parks. 

If there was one rule of the Court more than 
another that the Princess Leopold chafed against 
it was this, but she never dared to break it. 

When she came to England she made the best 
use of her freedom and cycled nearly every day. 
She was a good cyclist, too, and would do fifty 
or sixty miles a day without being in the least 
fatigued at the end of it. 

She was very fond of cycling about Windsor; 
when staying in London she would train as far 
as Slough and ride from there to Windsor, and to 
different places about it. 

I heard a rather curious story about one of these 
cycling expeditions. The Princess went into a 
cottage near Virginia Water to get tea, and whilst 
it was being got ready she began chatting with 
the cottager, and the conversation presently turned 
to royalties who had stayed at Windsor. 

" Which of these foreign royalties do you think 
was the most popular ? " asked the Princess. 

" Well, I don't know, I am sure," replied the 

85 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 



cottager ; " but the)^ do tell me that about the 
Castle the German Emperor is the only one they 
never want to see again." 

" Why is that ? " asked the Princess. 

"I don't rightly know," rephed the cottager; 
'' but they say at the Castle that he gives more 
trouble than half-a-dozen other Royal visitors 
together," an explanation that greatly amused 
the Princess. 

She could, of course, appreciate how extremely 
likely it was to be the true one. 

On another occasion, when the Princess was 
taking lunch at an hotel in Windsor, she met a lady 
who apparently knew Germany very well. They 
began chatting, and their talk, after a little while, 
turned to the Kaiser and German royalties in general. 

" The Kaiser and his family seem to be all right," 
said the lady, " but there are certainly a lot of 
queer royalties in Germany — the Prince Leopold 
and his wife, for example." 

This remark annoyed the Princess. She replied 
rather tartly that she supposed it was the privilege 
of royalty to be queer if it pleased them to be 
so, and abruptly quitted her companion. 

Sometimes the Princess would take it into her 
head to remain in her rooms at the seaside for a 
day or an afternoon. She did not do this often, 
for she was an energetic sort of woman who hated 
to sit doing nothing, but she had a perfect mania 
for letter-writing. 

86 



Incognito Visits to England 

When the Princess stayed in her apartments her 
suite at the hotel could not go out, for they never 
knew when the Princess might require their presence 
or when she might come to the hotel. They had 
to hang about the hotel, and at the end of a long 
summer's afternoon wasted in this way their 
remarks about the Royal lady who had kept them 
more or less prisoners were more candid than polite. 
The Princess, I am sure, sometimes stayed in her 
rooms for the very object of annoying her suite. 
To think of them fretting and fuming about the 
hotel on a glorious summer's afternoon, afraid 
to go out and hating to stay in, was just the sort 
of thing to profoundly amuse and please the 
Princess. 

When travelling anywhere from Klein Glienicke 
Princess Leopold had one very peculiar habit. 
She would never sleep on a strange bed, but always 
carried about her own with her wherever she went, 
and, of course, her own bedclothes. She had a 
special bedstead made for travelling purposes. 

I was told that when she was staying on a visit 
with a Royal relative in England some years ago, 
she was given a suite of rooms in the bedroom of 
which was a beautiful old carved oak bedstead. 

Its beauty, however, in no way appealed to the 
Princess from a practical point of view, at any 
rate ; she summoned the housekeeper to her room, 
and said that the bedstead must be removed, and 
the one she had brought with her must be put up 

87 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 



in its place. The housekeeper received the order 
with horror. The bedstead was an historical piece 
of furniture — kings and queens had used it. A 
Queen had used it at the birth of her child, who 
became a famous king. 

And yet this priceless bedstead must needs be 
removed from the room, as if it had been so much 
worthless lumber. The housekeeper was bound 
to obey the orders of this strange Royal guest, 
but she talked of the incident for years afterwafds 
with horror. 

The Princess, when in London, spent much of 
her time shopping. She would spend the whole 
day, when the weather was unsuitable for cycling, 
wandering about the great shops in the West End, 
bargaining a great deal, not always successfully, 
and sometimes, when the mood was on her, buying 
with reckless extravagance, though normally these 
shopping expeditions of hers were conducted with 
due regard to economy. 

She had accounts at shops in her incognito name. 
Some knew her real identity, and when she was in 
London would offer to send her any quantity of 
goods she desired to see on approval to her hotel, 
but the Princess rarely or never took advantage 
of these offers; she preferred to go round the 
shops herself. She was extremely punctual in the 
payment of her accounts, a thing that many German 
royalties are not. There are some fairly big sums 
of money due to London shopkeepers by different 

88 



Incognito Visits to England 

German royalties which they must wait for in 
patience until the end of the war. I heard of one 
Royal German lady who had owed several hundreds 
of pounds to a firm for over three years. This 
firm had just presented, if not an ultimatum, some- 
thing approaching it to this Royal lady when the 
war broke out, which relieved her for the time of 
having to pay her debt. 

But the Princess Leopold paid her accounts most 
regularly and never ran one up for a large sum. I 
do not think at the outbreak of the war that she 
had any debts in London ; anyway, if she had, they 
must have been for quite trifling sums. All her 
bills were paid through her secretary. The Princess 
kept all her money affairs in extremely good order. 

She had not any private fortune, a fact of which 
her husband was good enough to remind her more 
than once, but wiien she became a Prussian Princess 
she became entitled to an annual allowance from 
the Prussian State of, I think, £3000 a year. Of 
the exact amount I am not sure. Actually, this 
allowance was paid to her through the Kaiser, 
but he had it from the State for this purpose. 
The disadvantage of this method of obtaining her 
allowance, from the Princess's point of view, was 
that it was within the discretion of the Kaiser to 
withhold it. It might be withheld, for example, 
by way of punishment if a Prussian Princess 
offended against the rules of the Court. I never 
heard of this being done, but I did hear of 

89 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

a married Prussian Princess, who was rather 
extravagant and had got into debt, having part 
of her allowance suspended for two years to pay 
off her debts. 

The Princess Leopold kept regular accounts of 
her expenditure, and she never exceeded her allow- 
ance. She never touched a penny of her husband's 
money, enormously wealthy though he was. He 
could have easily allowed her five or ten thousand 
a year, but he would have as soon thought of cutting 
off his head as of doing anything like that ; and, 
to do her justice, I do not think the Princess would 
have taken anything from him. On a matter 
of this sort she had an extraordinary pride. If 
she wanted to buy any very costly thing, such as 
a piece of jewellery, which she could not afford out 
of her own money, she would never think of asking 
her husband to pay for it, and equally she would 
never purchase it on credit. She would either 
do without it, or wait until she could afford to pay 
for it. 

The Princess would take a most enormous 
quantity of luggage about with her on these trips 
of hers to England — trunks full of dresses and 
underwear, much of which she seldom wore, and 
she always expected her trunks to be in her room 
and unpacked as soon as she arrived. Often I 
believe her maids made plans to detain her on 
some excuse at the station on her arrival, to give 
the other servants time to get on to her hotel with 

90 



Incognito Visits to England 

her luggage ; for her temper would become so bad 
if she was there before her luggage that she would 
make every one about her miserable for the whole 
evening. 

In the summer of 1913 there was a very remark- 
able gathering of German royalties in England. 

For the first time for over twenty-five years the 
Prince Leopold came in that year to England with 
his wife. The Prince went to stay somewhere 
in Clifton, but the Princess remained in London, 
afterwards going to Littlehampton. It was on 
this occasion that the Princess received the mys- 
terious telegram which I mentioned in a previous 
chapter. 

In addition to the Leopolds, there were simul- 
taneously in England that year Prince and Princess 
August Wilhelm, the Prince Eitel Fritz, a son 
of the Kaiser, and Prince Friedrich Karl, a son of 
the Leopolds. 

The Prince and Princess August Wilhelm stayed in 
London, and Prince Eitel Fritz in the Isle of Wight. 

There is not the least doubt in my mind that 
this gathering was planned by the Kaiser, and was 
the result of deliberations between him and the 
Military Governor of Potsdam, the gentleman who 
was mainly responsible for the direction of the 
activities of the Kaiser's agents in different parts 
of the world, and different members of the Royal 
family. With all the objects of that now historical 
and secret gathering of German royalties in England 

91 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

I am not acquainted, nor do I know precisely 
the nature of all their activities, but this I do know : 
these royalties were in constant communication 
with one another and with many of their German 
friends in England. It was then practically re- 
garded as certain in Germany that there would be 
war between Germany and France before long. 
Part of this Royal German mission to England was 
to arrange about the return to Germany of Germans 
in England when war broke out. The more 
important and secret part of the mission, however, 
was to settle and apportion different duties to 
those Germans who were to remain in England 
when war broke out. 

I heard that when Prince Leopold was in England 
he was sent telegrams almost every day from the 
Military Governor of Potsdam, and daily telegrams 
were also sent to Prince August Wilhelm and 
Prince Eitel Fritz. 

A German officer in Potsdam told me that in 
the three or four weeks during which these German 
royalties were in England they completed work 
that the Kaiser's agents had been carrying on 
in this country for years. 

A Herr Goltzer, whom I met in Berlin, and whose 
wife was rather a friend of mine, also told me a 
good deal about this Royal visit. Herr Goltzer 
was connected with the secret service, and had been 
sent on several private missions by the Kaiser, 
but he fell out with his Royal master later. He 

92 



Incognito Visits to England 

joined the army and went to the front when war 
broke out, and was killed shortly afterwards. He 
said that when this Royal visit was over every 
German in England knew exactly what he must 
do in the possible event of war between England 
and Germany, though he seemed to think that such 
a war was unlikely. 

From another source I heard that during this 
mission to England the German Princes collected 
hundreds of thousands of pounds from wealthy 
Germans resident in England to defray the immense 
cost of the German Secret Service, which was then 
at the very height of its world-wide activities. 

Some rather amusing stories were told about the 
adventures of the German Princes and Princesses 
during that Royal gathering in England, by some 
members of the entourage. 

The Prince and Princess August Wilhelm were 
staying incognito at a rather expensive hotel in 
London ; they ran short of money, and on the day 
they were leaving they found that they were 
about £25 short of the amount required to meet 
their hotel bill. They did not want to disclose 
their identity— in fact, I heard that the Kaiser had 
given orders that all the German royalties then 
in England were to take the strictest precautions 
to preserve their incognito. The Prince August 
Wilhelm could, of course, have obtained money 
if he had had time to communicate with Berlin, 
but he wanted to leave London that afternoon. 

93 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

Prince Lichnowsky, the German Ambassador, 
was out of town, otherwise the Prince could have 
obtained money from him. Ultimately, the Prince 
and Princess went in a taxi to the country residence 
of a wealthy German, who lived some miles outside 
London, whom they knew, and he advanced them 
all the money they required. 

The Princess August Wilhelm had a maid, who 
got lost in London during that visit. The girl 
could not speak a word of English, but she knew 
a little French. She went to see the Tower one 
afternoon, and, on coming away, got into a motor 
'bus, which she thought would take her back to 
a part of the West End whence she could find her 
way without- difficulty to the hotel where she was 
staying. As it was, she was taken, I think, to 
Hammersmith; at any rate, she found herself 
there during the course of her efforts to get back 
to her hotel. She then did the most sensible 
thing she could : she went to a police station and 
at last got back to her hotel at midnight. 

The Princess had been in the meanwhile con- 
ducting a search for her, and inquiries had been 
circulated all about London for the missing maid. 

The Prince and Princess August Wilhelm spent, 
apparently, a very enjoyable visit to London on 
that occasion. They went to all the theatres. 
One night they went to the pit at His Majesty's 
Theatre, and took their places in the queue outside 
about half-an-hour before the doors opened. 

94 



Incognito Visits to England 

A girl with a young man was standing behind 
the Princess, whose conversation profoundly 
amused her. The two were indulging in light 
criticisms of the personal appearance of some of 
their friends. Of one of them the young man 
remarked that he had the sort of face that looked 
only " half-finished." The expression greatly took 
the Princess's fancy, and she appropriated it 
afterwards herself for use among some of her own 
friends. 

The Princess and her husband sampled the fare 
at a number of the cheaper restaurants in London, 
and like most Germans were agreeably impressed 
by them. She wrote to a friend of hers in Potsdam 
telling her of one restaurant where she and her 
husband dined for half-a-crown each : " We had 
fresh knives and forks for each dish, and salt- 
spoons just like we have at home," wrote the 
Princess. 

In the cheaper restaurants in Germany the one 
knife and fork must do for every dish, and there 
are no saltspoons — ^you must help yourself to salt 
with your knife; hence the Princess's surprise at 
the luxuries of the cheap restaurant in London. 

In the ordinary middle-class household in Ger- 
many the one knife and fork does duty throughout 
the dinner, and saltspoons are regarded as un- 
necessary. 

Another thing that greatly pleased the Princess 
in her wanderings about London on that occasion 

95 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

was the excellence of the tea-shops — especially of 
the cakes. 

The cakes obtainable in most London tea-shops 
are vastly superior and of far greater variety than 
those in the Berlin or Potsdam shops. 

In connection with this Royal gathering in 
England I heard a curious story, concerning a 
well-known and wealthy German who had been 
resident in England for many years. Prince Eitel 
Fritz became this gentleman's guest, and stayed 
with him for about a week. There were a number 
of other Germans resident in England, who were 
also there to meet the Prince. 

Every morning the whole party met together 
in their host's spacious library for a couple of hours, 
and during that time the strictest precautions 
were taken to see that there were no eavesdroppers 
near the room. The secretary to the Prince's 
host kept watch in the corridor outside the library, 
and two trusted servants were on guard in the 
gardens by the windows of the room. 

Almost at once after this house-party broke up 
the owner of the house sold it and all his effects, 
and went back to Germany. When I asked the 
person who told me this story why this gentleman 
had left England, he replied, " He had done the 
work he had been sent to England to do." It had 
apparently taken him twelve years to do it. 

There is one thing that my residence in Germany 
and my meetings with Germans has firmly and 

96 



1 



Incognito Visits to England 

absolutely convinced me of, and that is, that a 
German will always be loyal to Germany no matter 
what he may pretend to be. The Princess Leopold 
said to me after the outbreak of the war, when 
talking to me on this very subject : "I am very 
fond of England as you know, and would have 
willingly lived in England if circumstances had 
allowed me; but had I lived all my life in Eng- 
land — had I never seen Germany since I was 
able to walk or talk — I would still be as much a 
German as I am to-day; and in times such as 
these there is nothing I would not do to help 
Germany. And, believe me, that is the way 
every German feels." 

I heard the Princess Leopold discussing the 
position of naturalized Germans in England, and 
how far pro-British they were. " A pro-British 
German," she said, "is an unnatural German; 
but I do not believe there are many such persons." 

But it was not only the Princess Leopold who 
talked in this strain. Everybody I met in Germany 
and with whom I ever discussed Germans and 
Germany, always dwelt on the peculiar devotion 
of Germans to their own country. This sort of 
thing sometimes rather irritated me, for it was 
done in a manner that suggested that no one else 
ever had such love for their country as Germans, 
Once I remember discussing this subject with a 
lady connected with the household of the Crown 
Princess. This was long before the war. I 
G 97 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

suggested to her as politely as I could that a large 
number of Germans seemed to like England better 
than Germany, and had made their home there. 

" Oh, that has nothing to do with the matter 
we have been talking about," the lady replied; 
" you will find Germans settled down and living 
in many countries, but wherever you find Germans 
you find Germany — that is an old German saying, 
and, believe me, it is quite true. Wherever you 
find Germans you will find that each and all of 
them are generally doing something to help 
Germany as well as themselves." 

I have no doubt at all that during that gathering 
of German royalties in England in 1913, very many 
Germans were doing something to help Germany. 
What exactly the Prince Leopold did in his direc- 
tion I do not know, but I am sure he did his best 
to serve his country in his own way. 

When the Prince came to England that year 
he brought his motor-car with him and his chief 
chauffeur, and I heard that he motored practically 
to every place he visited. As well as going to 
Clifton he stayed at Bournemouth, and, I believe, 
visited friends at Cromer, Dover and some places 
in Yorkshire. The Prince had a peculiar habit 
when railway travelling — he would never sit down 
in a railway carriage ; he always stood up, holding 
himself very upright. I have known him keep 
standing in this way in a railway carriage for eight 
hours. He had a special saloon to himself, but 

98 



Incognito Visits to England 

even when he had not he would still refuse to sit 
down. 

On one occasion, when the Leopolds were travel- 
ling to Austria, an officer whom the Leopolds knew 
and who was travelling also to Austria, was invited 
by the Princess to travel in their private saloon 
carriage. The officer accepted the invitation. If 
he had known of the Prince's little peculiarity 
when travelling he probably would not have done 
so, as etiquette compelled every male occupant of 
the carriage to remain standing whilst the Prince 
stood. What the officer thought when he found 
himself obliged to stand for three-quarters of an 
hour in a comfortable carriage with empty seats 
in it, I do not know — probably things that would 
be more or less unprintable. Anyw^ay, at the first 
stop the officer found some excuses for breaking 
his journey, and left the train after thanking the 
Prince and Princess for their kindness in asking 
him to travel in their carriage, and expressing his 
deep regret at being unable to continue his journey 
with them. 

There was one plan that the Princess Leopold 
always adopted, with a view to preserving her 
incognito, when she was staying anywhere in 
England outside London. None of her letters 
to Germany were ever posted from the place at 
which she was staying; they were taken to the 
nearest town by a servant, where they were posted. 

This often led to inquiries on the part of the 

99 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

curious. The posting of, say, twenty or thirty 
letters to different Fraus, Frauleins and Countesses 
with German titles aroused some attention and 
curiosity in a local post office, where only a small 
number of letters are handled daily, and the Prin- 
cess's servant was watched and questioned as to who 
his mistress was. As a matter of fact, I believe 
that in spite of the Princess's precautions to pre- 
serve her incognito, her real identity became known 
to a good many people. 

I remember on one occasion, after the Princess 
had returned to Germany from England, one of 
her relatives sent her a copy of a weekly London 
paper containing a paragraph to the effect that the 
Crown Princess of Germany had been staying in 
London under the name of Sherenstein. The 
paragraph greatly interested the Princess and 
rather pleased her, for it was evidence that her 
real identity had not become properly disclosed, 
though some one had been guessing at it. 

The Princess assumed her incognito from the 
moment she left Klein Glienicke; she would 
reassume her real name directly she arrived at 
Flushing on her return journey, and she travelled 
in a private saloon to Berlin. The Princess when 
in England always had two watches, one set to 
English and the other to German time. On one 
occasion she took one of them to a watchmaker 
to have new glass put into it. The watchmaker, 
after endeavouring to find a glass that would fit 

100 



# 



Incognito Visits to England 

the case, said to the Princess : " I have not an English 
glass that will fit this watch, but I can give you a 
German one." " That will do me all right," said 
the Princess, and then added : "I know they are 
not as good as the English glasses." Whereupon 
the watchmaker remarked emphatically : " All the 
German goods are rubbish, to tell the truth, but 
they sell because they are cheap." 

The Princess Leopold when she stayed in rooms 
at the seaside made a point of thoroughly examining 
her bedroom before retiring for the night. Certain 
of the arrangements to be found in most seaside 
lodgings she objected to, and altered them as far 
as she could. One thing, for example, which she 
detested was to see the fireplace in her bedroom 
blockaded with a screen or artificial flowers. 
Obstacles of this sort to the admission of a fresh 
current of air she promptly removed. 

She also hated having many of those cheap little 
ornaments about her room that are common in 
furnished rooms at seaside places. The Princess 
would gather them carefully together and put 
them away in a box. 

If there was a piano in the sitting-room she would 
try it, and if it was a bad one she would not allow 
it to be opened during her stay. The Princess was 
a good pianist, and she had a really fine soprano 
voice. I often listened to her singing with great 
pleasure. 

Like most Germans who had had a good musical 

101 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

training she could not bear to hear bad singing 
or playing. If she heard either one or the other 
in the house where she had taken rooms, she would 
either seek rooms elsewhere or go out of the house 
whilst the indifferent musical performance was in 
progress. 

The peculiarities of landladies were a sore trial 
to the Princess, who was habitually accustomed 
to be served by every one about her with prompt 
obedience, and to have her least wish obeyed 
without question. 

It amused me sometimes to hear of the inter- 
views that took place between the Princess 
Leopold and landladies when she was looking for 
rooms. 

The Princess, I should explain, never engaged 
rooms at any place until her arrival. She would 
then leave all her luggage at the station in charge 
of her suite with the exception of one attendant, 
accompanied by whom she would start out on a 
hunt for rooms. 

She encountered all the difficulties which are so 
well known to English people who have engaged 
in a hunt for rooms at the seaside. 

I heard of an encounter that took place between 
her and the landlady of some rooms that took 
the Princess's fancy. 

The landlady was a small, neat, very clean little 
woman with sharp features, sharp temper and an 
independence of manner engendered by the know- 

102 



Incognito Visits to England 

ledge that the demand for such rooms as hers was 
greater than the supply. 

She stood by the Princess in silence as the latter 
surveyed the rooms. The Princess informed her 
that she liked the rooms, but remarked that the 
windows ought to be left open; they were shut 
and the rooms were slightly stuffy. The landlady 
simply nodded. Then the Princess observed a 
large pram in the hall, and asked if there were 
children in the house. " No," was the reply, 
delivered in a most uncompromising tone. 

Then the Princess put a question as to the sort 
of cooking which she might expect. '' Plain 
cooking," was the reply. 

The Princess suggested that plain cooking was 
all she required, but she liked meals to be punctually 
and nicely served. 

" I think you had better look at other rooms, 
ma'am," replied the landlady; "I don't think 
you and I would suit each other." 

It must have cost the Princess a very great 
effort to keep her temper. I can imagine how she 
would have liked to have ordered that landlady 
to leave the house instantly and to commandeer 
the whole of it. But, as a matter of fact, she 
pacified the irritable landlady and ended by 
engaging the rooms. 

Sometimes, when landladies tried her temper too 
hardly, the conduct of the negotiations would be 
left to the lady in attendance on the Princess. 

103 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

It was often amazing to me that the Princess 
would put up with all the inconveniences, imperti- 
nences and general unpleasantness she encountered 
in looking for and in staying in rooms, all of which 
she could have avoided by going to an hotel ; but 
the fear of her identity being discovered was so 
strong that she would never risk this happening 
by staying at an hotel. 

As a matter of fact, there was not much greater 
risk of her identity being discovered at an hotel 
than in lodgings. As I have said, I do not think 
that the Princess was quite so successful as she 
imagined in concealing it ; it leaked out, as a rule, 
though the fact that it did so may not always have 
become known to the Princess. 

Just imagine the inquiries that would naturally 
be made about a lady arriving at a seaside place 
with a dozen attendants and mountains of luggage. 
I know that often before she had been a day at a 
place like Littlehampton rumours had got about 
that a German Princess was staying there, and 
although the gossip hunters may not have guessed 
at her actual identity they often came near doing 
so. 

I remember on one occasion when I was with the 
Princess at the seaside the landlady, a couple of 
days after we had arrived, said to me : " The 
lady you are with is a Royal lady, is she not ? " 

I said that she was Frau Sherenstein, a German 
lady. 

104 



Incognito Visits to England 



" I know," replied the landlady, with a shake 
of her head ; " but when a lady comes here with 
more luggage than we can find room for, and has 
a number of servants staying at an hotel, she cannot 
be an ordinary lady." Then, after a slight silence, 
she added significantly : " The police know who 
she is." 

There was something rather characteristically 
German in the confident way in which the Princess 
believed she had concealed her identity. She was 
not stupid by any means, but once she had taken 
an idea into her head it required a great deal to 
remove it; she was quite sure that by going to 
cheap lodgings she could avoid any chance of its 
becoming known who she really was; she never 
saw the absurdity of the situation in which she 
placed herself by doing so, and how it must lead 
to inquiries. I don't think any of her servants, 
however, ever gave her away; they were very 
loyal indeed to her in that respect, much as they 
disliked her. 

But the whole method adopted by the Princess 
to conceal her identity was to my mind clumsy 
and stupid — rather like the German official efforts 
to conceal obvious facts about the war. 

On one occasion when the Princess was staying 
at the seaside some poster advertisements were 
put up about the town of some bazaar or flower- 
show, or something of that sort, which was to be 
held there. The effect of these posters on the 

105 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

Princess was most disturbing, for they announced 
that a Royal lady who knew the Princess was to 
open the show. The Princess at first thought of 
leaving the place at once, but she contented herself 
with leaving the town early the next day on a 
cycling expedition, and did not return until late 
in the evening, by which time the royalty who had 
opened the bazaar had returned to London. 

The Princess when out cycling was always 
rather interested in the groups of poor children 
that she encountered, and sometimes she would 
stop and talk to them and order her attendant to 
give them money to buy sweets. She never, by 
the way, carried any money herself, her attendant 
was always her purse-bearer. 

The Princess thought that the children she met 
on the countryside in England looked stronger 
and better fed than the country children in Germany, 
but she used to say that German children were 
neater in their appearance and better taught. 
But she admitted that the manners of English 
children were brighter and more pleasing than those 
of German children. The Princess, indeed, had a 
poor opinion of the manners of her own country 
people, as well she might. One of the first things 
that struck me when I first went to Germany was 
the uncouthness of railway officials, and their 
manners are a fairly good sample of the manners of 
their class throughout Germany. 

I remember once, when we were going back to 

106 



Incognito Visits to England 

Germany from a visit to England, the Princess 
said as we got into the train at Flushing : " Now 
we shall soon be back into the land of bad manners." 

When the Princess was in England she took in 
several morning daily papers, and would look 
through them all carefully, especially the new^s 
from the foreign correspondents in Germany. 

Once she saw a note from some correspondent 
about herself to the effect that she and the Prince 
were entertaining the English Ambassador at 
Klein Glienicke. This inaccurate statement greatly 
pleased her, for she thought it would lessen the 
chances of any one discovering that she was in 
England. The Princess also studied the bargain 
advertisements most carefully. 

They took in, regularly, several English weekly 
papers at Klein Glienicke. Prince Leopold's 
favourite English paper was Punchy which he would 
solemnly read through from cover to cover; but, 
as he was a person absolutely devoid of any sense 
of humour, I don't know what pleasure he derived 
from the pages of that periodical. 



107 



CHAPTER V 

ABOUT THE NEUES PALAIS 

In my early days at Klein Glienicke I felt ex- 
tremely anxious to see the German Emperor at 
close quarters. I had seen him once at a dis- 
tance; that was at Queen Victoria's funeral in 
my quite young days, and the War Lord of 
Europe had created a considerable impression 
on me. 

I confess I admired him immensely. I collected 
photographs of him and eulogistic notices about 
him from different papers. And in those days 
eulogistic notices about the Kaiser were indeed 
plentiful in all the English papers. I was not the 
only one who worshipped an idol that has since 
fallen very low. 

Long before war broke out my idol had received 
a number of severe falls. I got to know too much 
about it. The first time I saw the Kaiser at close 
quarters I had a great shock. This was at the 
confirmation of two of the young Leopold Princes, 
which was attended by the Kaiser and Kaiserin. 
I went to the service and had a good look at the 
Emperor and Empress as they walked slowly up 
the aisle, and was both astonished and disappointed 

108 



About the Neues Palais 



when I saw the War Lord of Europe at close quarters. 
I had pictured a tall, handsome man of powerful 
but graceful build, a figure full of kingly dignity 
and kingly pride. 

That was rather the impression that the Kaiser 
had made upon me when I first saw him at Queen 
Victoria's funeral, and judging from some of my 
press cuttings a rather like impression had been 
made by the Emperor on other people. 

At close quarters one obtains quite a different 
impression of the Kaiser. He is of medium height, 
does not by any means look as physically powerful 
as I had always imagined him to be, and his features 
are rather coarse. As he stood in his pew, even 
though he was in the uniform of the Prussian Guards, 
he did not look particularly distinguished. Yet he 
did not altogether lack dignity, and when he folded 
his arms and looked straight in front of him as his 
wont is in church, I thought, or perhaps tried to 
think, that there was something Imperial about my 
idol, though it had fallen already much below what 
I had for so long pictured it to be. 

The Kaiser's greeting to his young nephews after 
the service was a graceful performance, most cere- 
moniously done ; he kissed each of the boys affec- 
tionatety, and spoke gravely but very kindly to 
them about the religious ceremony they had taken 
part in and of their future. 

Some little while later I encountered the Emperor 
in a part of the Royal park that was strictly private, 

109 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

and which I had invaded in ignorance of its private 
character. He was walking by himself and seemed 
astounded, as well he might be, at seeing me. He 
stopped and addressed me in German; I told him 
who I was, and he then very brusquely told me in 
English that I had no right to be there and to leave 
the park at once, which I promptly did. That was 
the only occasion on which I had the honour of 
speaking to the All Highest. 

I heard much about the Imperial household 
and affairs at the Neues Palais during my stay at 
Potsdam. 

The Imperial establishment is a large one. 
There are an enormous number of equerries, ladies- 
in-waiting and officials of all kinds of whom about 
forty are in regular residence, whilst the remainder 
live at their own houses ; those who are frequently 
required at Court reside in Berlin or about Potsdam, 
whilst others live at their country houses in dif- 
ferent parts of Germany and only come to Court 
on occasions of great state. 

The Imperial establishment has been enormously 
increased of late years. The number of servants 
employed has been doubled during the past fifteen 
years, and the number of officials more than doubled 
during the same period. 

The number of great State functions and enter- 
tainments has been steadily growing as they have 
been increasing in costliness and magnificence. 
The banquet at the Imperial Schloss, for example, 

110 



About the Neuc*s Palais 



that is given on New Year's Day used to be a 
comparatively quiet family affair, the guests con- 
fined to the Kaiser's relatives. Noav it has become 
a function to which some hundreds of guests are 
bidden, and literally no expense is spared on the 
floral decorations or the menu ; and this is but one 
of many banquets that are given throughout the 
year, either at the Neues Palais or the Imperial 
Schloss in Berlin. 

The Kaiser's Court became, in fact, one of pro- 
bably the most extravagantly conducted of the 
Royal establishments in Europe. I heard that in 
the year 1908 the cost of the up-keep of the Royal 
establishment at the Neues Palais and the Imperial 
Schloss in Berlin, including all the household bills, 
exceeded the sum allotted for this purpose out of the 
various State allowances made to the Emperor by 
nearly £40,000. There were at this time all sorts 
of gossip and talk about Potsdam of the pecuniary 
difficulties into which the Kaiser was getting. 

Some of this talk was, no doubt, exaggerated. 
One story was to the effect that the Kaiser owed, 
in tradesmen's debts alone, £70,000. That I dare 
say was an exaggeration, but there seemed to be 
no doubt that a good deal was owing to tradesmen 
not only about Berlin but in Vienna, Paris and 
London . 

For many of the elaborate State banquets rarities 
and dainties were ordered from all parts of the 
world, the Emperor being ambitious, apparently, 

111 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

to gain for the Royal table something in the way of 
an unique reputation regardless of what it might 
cost. Some of these banquets were in truth unedi- 
fying spectacles from all I heard. They lasted 
over two hours and there were guests who would 
boast that they had partaken plentifully of every 
dish — a rather difficult feat for even the greediest 
Boche to accomplish when one bears in mind that 
there were often twenty or more dishes on the 
menu. 

The Kaiser, I heard, resorted to many different 
ways of obtaining money at this time before he 
finally obtained an increased grant from the 
State. One of these methods was to sell invitations 
to Court functions. 

This was done, of course, discreetly. It must not 
be supposed that an invitation to a function at the 
Neues Palais could be obtained simply by sending 
a cheque to the treasurer at the Neues Palais. 

The whole business was left in the hands of an 
astute lady in the Royal household. This lady 
would get into touch with socially ambitious and 
wealthy women, and smooth over the difficulties 
that lay in the way of their getting formally pre- 
sented at Court for a consideration, say, of £500. 
Another £500 would secure them an invitation 
perhaps to a State ball, or one of those large evening 
musical receptions that were given at the Imperial 
Schloss from time to time. 

There were several ladies in first-rate society in 

112 



About the Neues Palais 



Berlin who performed a service of this kind for 
any of their acquaintances who were wilHng to pay 
for it, and the system adopted at the Court simply 
diverted the money that might have found its way 
into the pockets of various professional chaperons 
into that of the Emperor. 

The professional chaperon, however, unless she 
were a lady of great social influence, could never 
do more than make it easy for a client (if I may use 
the word) to be presented at Court. She could not 
possibly guarantee any one an invitation to a Court 
entertainment. The invitations to all Court func- 
tions were submitted to the Kaiser, and if any name 
appeared on the list not ordinarily included in the 
invitations to Court functions, a very good reason 
had to be given as to why an invitation was sent 
to that particular person. If the reason did not 
appear a good one to the All Highest he would not 
allow the invitation to be sent. Under the system, 
however, adopted at the Court of selling invitations, 
the person who paid for one was assured of getting it. 

I heard also that by an extension of this system 
any lady who desired to be included in the Royal 
entourage, when the Kaiser and Empress visited 
a foreign court, could occasionally have her ambi- 
tions gratified by the same process as that by which 
she could secure an invitation to Court. 

The lady who did so, however, had to be a person 
of considerable wealth and of established position 
in general society, and I believe she had to go through 
H 113 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

the ordeal of an interview with the Empress on the 
subject : if the Empress was not satisfied that the 
lady was fitted in every way to figure in the Royal 
entourage she would decline to allow her in it 
during a Royal visit. 

I was told, on very good authority, that a lady 
who accompanied the Kaiser and Empress when 
they visited the English Court in 1911 paid a very 
large sum to be allowed to do so. 

The visits to the English Court were always 
accounted, in the German Royal entourage and in 
Berlin society generally, by far the most important 
of such events. Apart from the regular members 
of the Royal household who accompanied the 
Emperor and Empress on all Royal visits, there were 
included in the Royal entourage a number of persons 
of the highest social distinction, who were connected 
in some way with the Imperial establishment. So 
to be included in the Imperial entourage on such 
an occasion was a distinction that to a very socially 
ambitious person was regarded as worth paying 
well for. 

Some American women who came to Berlin for 
the season purchased invitations to Court functions. 
It has been the policy at the German Court for 
some years past to be extremely polite to Americans. 
Prominent Americans who came to Berlin were 
always invited to any Court function that happened 
to be on, and both the Emperor and Empress of 
late years went so far as to visit some Americans 

114 



I 



About the Neues Palais 



at their private residences in Berlin, a thing abso- 
lutely contrary to all the rules and traditions of the 
Prussian Court. But, of course, the Kaiser can 
make or unmake any rules of this kind that he 
pleases. If the Kaiser was outwardly polite to 
Americans, I do not think from all I heard that a 
very exalted opinion was entertained of them at 
the Neues Palais or the Imperial Schloss. 

A lady connected with the Imperial establishment 
told me that the Kaiser in discussing Americans 
once said : " It is a curious thing that the highest 
compliment you can pay the best sort of Americans 
is to mistake their nationality. Take them to be 
anything but Americans and they will be delighted." 

The Empress secretly detested Americans, more 
especially American women. A well-known Amer- 
ican lady, who was a frequent guest at the Neues 
Palais and the Imperial Schloss in Berlin when she 
was in Germany, was likened by one of the Empress's 
ladies-in-waiting to " a full-page advertisement in 
the way she screams at you "; a description that 
greatly amused the Empress, and it became after- 
wards a regular joke at the Court to describe 
American women as " full pages." 

To return, however, to the financial affairs of the 
Emperor. The difficulties in which the Kaiser 
found himself some years ago, though due in part 
to great extravagance and a constantly increasing 
regular expenditure without any proportionate in- 
crease in income, were also certainly due to the 

115 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 



careless methods of the treasurer's department in 
the Royal establishment, and to the slack way in 
which the accounts were kept. 

Nearly all supplies for the household were 
ordered over the telephone from different tradesmen 
by an official known as the chief clerk of the kitchen. 
The chief chef, the chef of confectionery, the 
housekeeper and others would give a requisition 
order to the chief clerk for whatever was wanted 
in their respective departments, and the clerk would 
simply telephone the order to the tradesmen. The 
clerk or his assistant was supposed to enter up the 
orders in a book, and on the delivery of the goods 
to check over the entries with the tradesmen's 
invoices. 

As a matter of fact the clerk never troubled to 
do anything of the kind. He simply ordered what 
he was told to order, and the result was that the 
tradesmen charged practically what they pleased. 
The most enormous overcharges were made ; when 
the accounts were sent in at the end of the quarter 
they were passed by the chief clerk and sent to the 
treasurer for payment without ever having been 
properly checked. The treasurer paid them when 
it was convenient to do so; when it was not he 
held the accounts over, and in this way big bills 
soon accumulated. Ultimately, some time I think 
in 1910— anyway, it was after King Edward's death, 
a firm of accountants were called in to go through 
all the accounts at the Neues Palais and Imperial 

116 



About the Neues Palais 



Schloss. This work occupied over six months. 
At the end of it the keeping of the accounts was 
put on a proper system, and they were afterwards 
checked half-yearly by auditors; and from this 
time the accounts were paid regularly every month 
or quarter. By the sale of some of the Royal estate 
the Kaiser relieved himself of all outstanding 
liabilities, and the State granted him a considerably 
increased allowance ; I do not exactly know how 
much, but it brought the total State grant up to 
nearly a million pounds per annum. 

There was one extravagance in which the Kaiser 
would indulge by fits and starts. When the 
mood was on him he would give the most costly 
presents to his friends and relatives. When one 
of the ladies of the Court was married the Emperor 
presented an autographed photograph of himself and 
the Empress in a double jewelled frame that could 
not have cost less than £200. To another lady in 
the Royal entourage the wedding present from 
the Kaiser consisted of a silver-bound blotter that 
cost perhaps £l 1^. Od, The difference in the value 
of the presents by no means represented the dif- 
ference in the Royal regard in which the two ladies 
were held. Possibly the recipient of the more 
costly gift may have stood rather higher in the 
favour of the Emperor and Empress, but the one 
present was selected when the Emperor was in one 
of his extravagant moods and the other in one of 
the economical moods, during which the Kaiser 

117 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

would appear to imagine that only by the exercise 
of the most rigid economy in every direction could 
he avert financial disaster. 

It was in one of these moods that the Kaiser 
some few years ago, when the German Empress was 
going to some big charitable bazaar, sent her a 
telegram urging her not to spend more than £5. 
Usually the Empress at a function of this sort 
would spend at least £50. 

The Kaiser was in one of his extravagant moods, 
I think, when he purchased his wedding present to 
the Princess Victoria Margarethe on her marriage 
to Prince Reuss. It was a beautiful gold bracelet 
containing a miniature of himself surrounded with 
diamonds. However, he was really very fond of 
the Princess, and the costliness of the gift was 
perhaps an indication of the measure of his affection 
for his young niece. 

Easter, Christmas and Whitsuntide were all the 
occasion of special ceremonies at the German Court. 
Christmas Day the Kaiser spent altogether with 
his family and relations. The chief meal of the 
day was lunch, which was always attended by 
the Leopolds. It was on Christmas Eve that the 
Emperor, attired in civilian clothes, would go out 
after dark into the poorer quarters of Berlin and 
distribute money to any poor people he might 
happen to meet. Here again, however, the amount 
of money he would distribute would rather largely 
depend upon his mood. I have been told that on 

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About the Neues Palais 



some occasions he would distribute not more than 
five pounds ; on others his distribution would run to 
twenty or thirty pounds. 

At Easter the Kaiser sent immense bouquets of 
flowers made up in the shape of a huge Easter egg 
to all his relatives. The making up of the bouquets 
took three days, and was done by a number of 
experts specially trained in this sort of work. The 
famous Shrippen Fest was held on Whit Monday 
at the Neues Palais. 

Shrippen Fest was the name given to an enter- 
tainment to which a thousand of the soldiers 
quartered at Potsdam were invited by the Emperor. 
The Fest, or Feast, consisted of a plateful of bread 
and cheese and a quart of beer, which was served 
to each soldier. The feast was held in a building 
adjoining the Neues Palais known as the Communs, 
where there was accommodation for over a thousand 
people. 

The soldiers arrived at noon; the feast was set 
out on long tables, and when the bread and cheese 
had been consumed (which had to be done by twelve 
o'clock) the Kaiser, accompanied by the Empress 
and a number of his relatives and a large number of 
officers, would arrive and take their places on a 
raised stage at one end of the big room. 

At the other end of the room places were re- 
served for about a hundred members of the various 
Royal households about Potsdam, who had been 
invited to Shrippen Fest. 

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Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

When all the Kaiser's guests had taken their 
places the Emperor proceeded to address his 
soldiers. The speech was invariably of a warlike 
character, and was much the same each year. 

The Kaiser in his Shrippen Fest speech of 1914 
made one very remarkable statement. After his 
usual warning to the soldiers that the army must 
ever be ready to draw the sword in the defence of 
the Fatherland, the Emperor said : " We are pre- 
pared as it is our duty to be now and always to 
resist attack . . . but the time of preparation, it 
may be, is drawing to a close and the time for action 
drawing nigh." 

This was almost the concluding sentence of the 
speech. I can recall the occasion very clearly, as 
clearly as if it had but happened yesterday. I can 
see the Kaiser standing in front of the stage in 
the uniform of the Prussian Guard, behind him 
a brilliant group of royalties, ladies and officers, 
making by their dresses and uniforms a vivid back- 
ground of colours to the figure of the War Lord of 
Europe, whose right hand rested on his hip as was 
usual with him when making a speech. I can 
hear the terrific cheering of the Kaiser's guests 
on the stage and at the tables as the Emperor 
asked the soldiers to drink to the health of their 
God, their country and their Emperor. It was 
really quite a thrilling scene, and it thrills me now 
when I think of it and of how little idea I had at the 
time that behind the concluding words of the King-, 

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About the Neues Palais 



Emperor lay a menace deep, terrible, deadly to 
my own country. 

The concluding words of the Kaiser's speech were 
afterwards much commented on both at the Neues 
Palais and Klein Glienicke, and the general impres- 
sion seemed to be that they referred to the possi- 
bility of a war with France in the near future. 

It was at this Shrippen Fest of 1914 that the 

Kaiser decided that Prince Leopold, the youngest 

son of the Prince and Princess Leopold, must enter 

the army. The young Prince was so delicate that 

his mother had pleaded with the Kaiser to relax 

the rule under which every Prussian Prince must 

enter either the army or navy unless excused from 

doing so by the Emperor. The Kaiser had had this 

matter under consideration for some months, but 

at the Shrippen Fest of 1914 he told the Princess 

Leopold, who was present with her husband, that 

the boy must enter the army. " The time is 

approaching," the Emperor said to her, " when 

every German must be ready if need be to give his 

life for his country, and Prussian Princes must be 

the first to set an example of devotion to the 

fatherland." 

The young Prince shortly afterwards entered 
the army. 

The Kaiser could deliver a speech effectively ; he 
spoke rather slowly, for when he quickened his 
utterance he always became indistinct. This was 
due, I believe, to some slight malformation in his 

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Seven Years at the Prussian Court 



palate. He had lessons in elocution from the 
leading elocutionists in Berlin, but he could never 
acquire both a clear and even fairly rapid 
utterance. To be understood he had to speak 
slowly, but he could speak impressively, and he 
could change very rapidly the note on which he was 
speaking. He would sometimes gradually raise 
his voice almost to a shout, and then suddenly 
conclude on a low, softly pitched note in a manner 
that was sometimes extremely effective. He prac- 
tised this trick very assiduously. He would re- 
hearse his speeches very carefully, generally before 
a looking-glass. 

The Kaiser never made a speech in civilian attire ; 
indeed, he rarely wore it ; it was against the rules 
of the Court for a Prussian Prince to appear at any 
public function in civilian clothes. The Kaiser 
could have broken this rule, of course, had he chosen, 
but he never did — possibly because he felt that he 
looked, as the late King suggested to him, " a much 
more imposing god in uniform than in tweeds." 

If the Kaiser could deliver a speech effectively he 
altogether lacked the ability to compose one. All 
his speeches were prepared for him by one of his 
secretaries, a Captain Harfner— a relation, I believe, 
of the German Chancellor, Dr. Bethmann-Hollweg. 
Herr Harfner was one of the least conspicuous 
figures in the Imperial entourage. He was a man 
of about sixty years of age, who had been in the 
navy and later became secretary to some wealthy 

122 



About the Neues Palais 



member of the Reichstag, through whose influence 
he obtained a position in the secretaries' depart- 
ment in the Imperial household. He did not make 
much of a secretary, but the Kaiser soon discovered 
that Captain Harfner could write excellent 
speeches, and he was turned on to do this work for 
his Royal master; he has done it excellently well 
for the past twelve years. The Kaiser has to give 
his faithful speech-maker but the barest outline 
of the speech he desires to make, and Herr Harfner 
will prepare an utterance that fulfils precisely all 
the All Highest's requirements. 

The speech may have been intended to please 
and gratify school-children, or to frighten some small 
State, or simply to startle Europe; whatever the 
purpose of the speech Herr Harfner would have one 
prepared in half-an-hour. I have heard it said of 
the secretary that knowing the sort of speeches the 
Kaiser liked to make and was likely to make, he 
kept a number of draft speeches in hand on various 
topics and suitable for different occasions, so that 
when one was required he had little or nothing to 
do but to slightly amplify and alter one of these 
draft speeches to make it suit the purpose of the 
Emperor at the moment. 

Comparatively speaking, only a few of the 
Emperor's speeches were made in public or were 
published. The majority of them were made at 
private functions like Shrippen Fest, to which the 
press was not admitted. I was told of a rather 

123 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

remarkable speech the Emperor made on the New 
Year's Day celebration of 1914 at the Imperial 
Schloss. The Emperor referred to the occasion 
when he entertained King George and Queen 
Mary at the marriage of the Princess Victoria 
Luise in the previous summer. The Emperor, I 
heard, denied very emphatically a rumour that was 
then prevalent at Potsdam that he and the Empress 
were going to visit the English Court in the coming 
spring. The Emperor said that though a visit to 
the English Court was an event that both he and 
the Empress always looked forward to with the 
greatest pleasure, he deeply regretted to say that he 
did not see any likelihood just then of the possibility 
of such a visit being arranged. " Perhaps," he 
said, " ere we visit England again much may have 
happened, but nothing, I trust, that will disturb 
the good relations that exist between the King of 
England and myself." 

Once again this speech was taken to refer to the 
near possibility of war with France. 

The Kaiser did rather a significant thing in the 
March of 1914. Arrangements had been made for 
carrying out redecorative work on a very large 
scale both at the Imperial Schloss and at the Neues 
Palais. Some big contracts had been entered 
into for this work, which was to have been put in 
hand in May. But towards the end of March the 
contracts were all suddenly cancelled and the con- 
templated work indefinitely postponed. Part of 

124 



About the Neues Palais 



this work included the repainting of two of the 
three chief State reception-rooms at the Neues 
Palais, which were named, according to their exist- 
ing colours, the green and yellow rooms, to which 
colours the Emperor had taken a dislike. 

The Kaiser is extremely sensitive to colour. If 
he finds himself in a room the general colour scheme 
of which he dislikes, it is greatly apt to affect his 
temper. 

There is a well-known story told of the Emperor 
that when he went to dinner one night with Herr 
Ballin, he suddenly remarked to his host that he 
had felt extremely irritable ever since he had sat 
down to dinner, and as the dinner was so excellent 
and the company so pleasant he was at a loss to 
account for this sense of irritation until he noticed 
the colour of the walls. " I cannot sit amid these 
dark green walls any longer," remarked the Kaiser. 
" Let us remove to some other apartment." And 
this had to be done ; the whole dinner-table had to 
be relaid and the meal finished in a white-coloured 
apartment that the All Highest approved of. 

The Kaiser's sensitiveness about colour, unfor- 
tunately for those about him is, however, not a fixed 
thing so far as the colours which irritate him are 
concerned. For example, at one time he conceived 
a horror of dark blue. There happened at that 
time to be only one room in the Neues Palais 
decorated in dark blue, and that was a room rarely 
or never used by the Kaiser — it was the morning- 

125 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

room devoted to the ladies-in-waiting in attendance 
on the Empress for the day. 

The colour of this apartment was therefore 
allowed to remain as it was, otherwise it would 
have had to be repainted. The ladies-in-waiting, 
however, who had afternoon or evening gowns of 
dark blue had to put them out of their wardrobe, 
for they dare not wear them in the presence of 
the Emperor. 

But the Kaiser's dislike of dark blue only lasted a 
short time, six months, perhaps, and then his pet 
aversion in colour became yellow. 

These varying dislikes to different colours often 
necessitated the repainting and redecoration of 
rooms frequently used by the Kaiser, which were 
in the colour that he had taken a dislike to. 

For this reason nearly every season the colours 
in some of the chief apartments had to be altered, 
but the redecorative work that was to have been 
carried out at the Neues Palais and at the Imperial 
Schloss in May 1914, to which I have alluded, was 
on a much bigger scale than usual. 

That this sensitiveness to colour on the part of 
the All Highest was largely affected, I have no 
doubt, though I dare say he sometimes persuaded 
himself that it was genuine. The Emperor had a 
great deal of affectation in his character, and he 
lived in a continual state of posing ; it pleased him 
that he should have the reputation of being peculiar 
about many things. He was immensely gratified 

126 



About the Neues Palais 



when some one wrote a description of him in some 
Berhn paper stating that the Kaiser took a wonder- 
ful dehght in sunHght, and describing how he would 
revel in walking or taking hard exercise in blazing 
hot sunlight. This statement, though it was a 
pure invention, greatly pleased the Empc^ror ; he 
declared it was absolutely true, and afterwards, 
to the amusement of his entourage, would often 
talk of the beneficial effects he experienced by 
taking exercise in hot sunlight. Perhaps, as some 
one at the Neues Palais suggested, the writer who 
had made the statement about the All Highest 
which so pleased him had intended to say that the 
Emperor delighted to be in the full glare of the 
limelight — ^this would certainly have been abso- 
lutely true. 

On one occasion when the Emperor went to stay 
with the King of Wiirtemberg his host had the 
Emperor's private apartments all repainted in white, 
red and gold colours, which the Emperor had often 
declared were his favourites for decorative purposes 
in rooms; but just at this time the Kaiser had 
taken a violent dislike to red, or fancied he had. 
When he arrived at his relative's residence and was 
shown into his newly decorated apartments he 
glanced about them, covered his eyes with his hand, 
and declared that the glare from all the red colour 
was '*• horrible — horrible — horrible." The King of 
Wiirtemberg, however, understood his cousin better 
and was at all events less inclined to humour him 

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Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

than humble friends of the Kaiser hke Herr Balhn. 
" You will get accustomed to the glare after a bit, 
Kaiser," he said; ''anyway, these must be your 
rooms whilst you are with me." And the Emperor, 
though protesting against the hideousness of the 
red tone in his bedroom where the colour was 
particularly conspicuous, managed to put up with it. 

All the Emperor's near relatives, by the way, 
called him Kaiser. More distant relations, like 
members of the English Royal family, addressed 
him by his Christian name. 

It would be difficult to imagine two men more un- 
like each other than the two chief Prussian Princes — 
I mean the Kaiser and Prince Frederick Leopold. 

The everyday life of the latter consisted in simply 
eating, drinking and taking a moderate amount of 
exercise. Prince Leopold simply existed. There 
is no doubt that the Kaiser lived every day of his 
life. He was the most extraordinarily restless 
sort of person it is well-nigh possible to imagine. 
He delighted in big social functions, military dis- 
plays, banquets and visits to Courts. 

During the past ten or twelve years the Kaiser 
had as a matter of policy admitted to his friendship 
many great commercial magnates like Herr Ballin 
and others, and he would entertain these men with 
great magnificence, and honour them from time to 
time by becoming their guest. 

The Kaiser in doing this departed from the 
purely aristocratic traditions of the Prussian Court, 

128 



About the Neues Palais 



but with the commercial development of Germany 
these aristocratic traditions were impossible to 
maintain. Old-fashioned people about the Court 
regarded these new bourgeois friends of the 
Emperor with great dislike. One lady-in-waiting 

to the Empress, a Baroness F , a non-resident 

member of the Royal household, would never call 
on, or receive at her own house, any of the com- 
mercial magnates she met at the Neues Palais or 
the Imperial Schloss at Berlin. 

The Kaiser, in admitting men like Herr Ballin 
to his friendship, no doubt did so partly because he 
saw how necessary it was that he should keep in 
close touch with the men who were building up 
Germany's commerce and trade, upon which her 
prosperity depended; but apart from this the 
Emperor loved to see the slavish respect which 
these rich men of commerce held him in, and the 
almost grovelling attitude they adopted towards 
him. Great as was the respect paid to the Emperor 
by his own relations and the old aristocratic families 
about the Court, the Emperor was to them only a 
person raised above them by virtue of his position 
as sovereign — by birth they regarded themselves 
as his equal, as they were in point of fact. But 
the Kaiser's commercial friends claimed no such 
equality. They literally regarded themselves as 
his humble servants; it is evidence, I think, of a 
certain littleness in the Emperor's character that 
he liked for this reason to have these men about 
I 129 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

him. They submitted humbly to the sort of rough 
joking that the Kaiser when in a certain mood hked 
to indulge in, but which was not in the least appre- 
ciated by the aristocratic or princely members of 
the Royal entourage. 

But even among his bourgeois friends the Kaiser 
once found that he might carry this fondness for 
rough joking too far. 

I was told that on one occasion the Emperor 
when dining with some wealthy mine-owner so 
insulted one of the guests that the man rose from 
the table and left the room. This individual had 
an unusually large mouth; he was sitting opposite 
the Kaiser, and after dinner when dessert was 
placed on the table the Emperor with a loud laugh 
asked one of the guests sitting on the same side of 
the table with him to try if he could throw an apple 
across the table into the mouth of the individual 
with the large mouth. The insulted guest at once 
rose from the table and without a word left the 
room. The Emperor, I believe, afterwards sent him 
through his host a sort of apology, explaining that he 
merely meant to have a friendly jest with him. 
I do not know whether this man whom the Kaiser 
had so openly and grossly insulted ever met him 
again; it would not surprise me if he did — the 
bourgeois German would forgive almost any insult, 
however gross, if the Emperor was the person guilty 
of it. 

The Empress rarely or never met any of these 

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About the Neues Palais 



bourgeois friends of the Kaiser except when they 
were received at Court. She never went to their 
houses, and they were seldom asked to meet her 
at any country house party. Indeed, the Empress 
rigidly confined her own friendships to purely 
aristocratic or Royal families, with the exception of 
the Krupps. Frau Bohlen, the daughter of Fried- 
rich Krupp, who became the Mistress of Essen 
after her father's death, was, of course, on terms 
of considerable friendship with the Emperor and 
Empress, who both called her Bertha. 

Von Bohlen, who married Bertha Krupp, the 
greatest heiress in Germany and one of the richest 
young women in the world, was formerly in the 
diplomatic service. They first met somewhere in 
Italy — in Milan, I think, where Bertha Krupp and 
her mother had gone on a holiday. I heard that 
the Kaiser was strongly opposed to the marriage 
between the penniless young diplomatist and the 
richest heiress in Germany; but though Bertha 
Krupp was always dutifully submissive to the 
Emperor and Empress, she made it plain that she 
would not allow either of them to interfere in a 
matter that was so entirely her own affair as the 
selection of a husband. To quarrel with the 
Mistress of Essen was not a thing the Emperor and 
Empress at all desired to do; they therefore 
accepted the inevitable, and von Bohlen w^as duly 
received at the Neues Palais. He proved rather a 
capable sort of person; after his marriage he left 

131 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

the diplomatic service and entered the Krupp 
business, and soon became its controlHng head. 

I met a lady in Potsdam who had been several 
times the guest of Frau von Bohlen, at her villa 
on the heights of Essen overlooking the great 
works and the stretches of neat little houses where 
some thousands of the Krupp workers are housed. 

She told me a rather interesting tale about an 
artist who was commissioned by Bertha Krupp to 
paint a picture of Essen as seen from the Krupp 
Villa. The artist became the guest of the Krupps 
for the occasion; he worked sometimes out of 
doors and sometimes in a studio in the house which 
had been specially arranged for him. He made 
one condition with Bertha von Bohlen and her 
husband before undertaking to paint the picture : 
this was that on no account should any one look 
at it until it was completed. There was to be no 
coming to the studio to see how the picture w^as 
getting on or anything of that sort, and when he 
was working out of doors nobody was to come near 
him; only on getting an undertaking that this 
condition should be scrupulously observed by the 
von Bohlens and the members of their household, 
and by any guests who might be staying with them, 
would the artist undertake to paint the picture. 
The undertaking was given, and for sixteen days 
the artist laboured on his canvas. On the morning 
of the sixteenth day he announced that the picture 
was finished and that it might be seen by the 

132 



About the Neues Palais 



Master and Mistress of Essen. The two, with 
half-a-dozen guests, went to the studio. When 
they entered it they saw a canvas about four feet 
square on an easel. The artist had depicted some- 
thing in the nature of a ruined countryside. There 
were men, women and children lying apparently 
dead in every direction. There were little groups 
of houses in various stages of dilapidation, and 
scorched, blackened and uprooted trees and 
stretches of rank pasture and devastated cornfields. 
In the foreground of the picture lay a little girl 
of about three years dying apparently in horrible 
agony and with part of an arm blown away. The 
Master and Mistress gazed at the picture for some 
moments in silence. So did their guests. Then 
Frau von Bohlen turned a face white with anger 
to the artist, and said, '' Is that the picture you have 
painted of Essen? " 

"It is," replied the artist, and then he added : 
" Of course, I don't want to be paid for it, if you 
don't like it ; but the picture represents the impres- 
sion that Essen made on my mind. I could not 
paint it in any other way." 

" Just consider," said the lady, who told me 
this story, " what the feelings of the von Bohlens 
must have been when they saw this picture. 
Think of what they expected to see : the mighty 
workshops that are the glory of Germany; the 
crowd of workers and stretches of workers' villas 
all pictorially glorified in some way or other by the 

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Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

artist." The artist, by the way, called the picture 
" A World in Ruins." Frau von Bohlen kept the 
picture, paid for it, and had it destroyed at once ; 
but she had Essen painted by an artist who pro- 
duced the sort of picture that was wanted of him. 

The Empress when the von Bohlens were in 
Berlin frequently had them to the Imperial Schloss 
— a compliment, I believe, that the Empress never 
paid to any one except a relation or a member of 
the Royal household. 

The most intimate friend of the Empress, and 
one of the most influential persons in the Imperial 
household, was undoubtedly the Countess Brockdorf . 

The Countess Brockdorf is the Mistress of the 
Robes to the Empress, and has been in the Imperial 
establishment for quite a long number of years. 
The Countess is over sixty, but she still retains, 
and so long as her health lasts is likely to retain, 
the very difficult, arduous and what must often 
have proved most unpleasant position which she 
has filled so long and so capably. 

The Empress has the greatest affection for her, 
and I believe the Countess is sincerely devoted 
to her Royal mistress. With the exception of a 
few people connected with the Royal establishment 
the Countess had no intimate friends. She never 
dined out except when she accompanied the 
Empress to some large dinner party, but would 
occasionally go to afternoon tea at the private house 
of some friend. 

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I 



About the Neues Palais 



It was part of her duty to see that every lady who 
attended a Court was attired in accordance with 
the rules of the Court before she appeared before 
the Emperor and Empress. 

Many ladies would send photographs of them- 
selves attired in their Court gowns to the Countess 
before going to Court, so that they might be sure 
that their dresses were correct in every detail. 

It may readily be imagined that the Countess 
Brockdorf, on account of having to perform such 
tasks and of the very thorough way in which she 
did perform them, was by no means a very popular 
figure in general society. I heard that some 
ladies wrote to the Empress to complain of the 
trouble the Countess put them to on account of 
the most trifling errors in their costumes; but 
the Empress always supported the Countess, and 
would never interfere with her decision in such 
matters. 

There was one rather peculiar rule about the 
attire of ladies at Court that the Empress made 
some years ago. This was that a lady should never 
wear a veil at Court, or at any Court function, or at 
any time in the presence of the Empress. Even 
Royal ladies were compelled to observe this rule. 

The Countess Brockdorf had other difficult and 
delicate tasks to attend to besides those I have 
mentioned. 

It was part of her unofficial duties to act from 
time to time as mediator between the Emperor and 

135 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

Empress when differences arose between them. 
However, the differences between the Emperor and 
Empress were rarely of a very serious kind. As a 
matter of fact, they were chiefly when the Emperor 
was in one of those moods of his when he was bent 
apparently on quarrelling with any one he had any- 
thing to say to. In such a mood he would upbraid 
the Empress with neglecting some of the duties that 
he declared were especially hers; he would, for 
example, take her to task about the extravagance of 
the household accounts, which was entirely due to his 
own carelessness; or he would sometimes become 
excessively indignant over the lack of discipline 
in the Imperial household, and find fault with the 
vulgarity and rowdiness of certain members of it. 
The occasional vulgarity and rowdyism of such 
members of the household were altogether due to 
the Kaiser, who, as I have already said, would 
when in a certain mood encourage that sort of 
conduct by precept and example, and those who 
followed it did so in the desire to please the 
Emperor. 

When the Kaiser upbraided the Empress too 
violently she would retire to her own private 
apartments, and later the Countess Brockdorf would 
seek the Kaiser's presence and explain how un- 
happy he had made her Royal mistress, with the 
result that the Emperor and Empress were usually 
at once reconciled. 

On the whole, I believe the married life of the 

136 






About the Neues Palais 



Kaiser and the Empress has been fairly happy. 
The Empress entertains the most profound admira- 
tion for the Emperor, and he has found in her a very 
wilhng, submissive and capable helpmate. 

The strongest feminine influence in the Kaiser's 
life beyond question has been his daughter Victoria 
Luise. When she was quite a little child he would 
often spend a couple of hours talking with her and 
playing with her. I heard a rather amusing story 
of how the Princess Victoria Luise once kept her 
father late for some important military function. 

The Emperor was to leave the Palace at half-past 
ten with two of his military equerries. As the 
Kaiser was descending the staircase leading from 
his private apartments his daughter rushed out of 
her room and called to her father to come back and 
see a new doll's house that he had purchased for 
her and that had arrived early that morning. 

The Kaiser in vain explained that he had to 
leave the Palace at once. In vain he promised to 
look at the doll's house later on. The Princess 
insisted that he must come now. This the Kaiser 
declared to be impossible, and bidding his daughter 
to run back to her room and to be a good little girl, 
the War Lord continued his way down the stair- 
ease. At the foot of it he did a fatal thing — he 
looked back and saw Victoria Luise in tears. That 
settled it. The Emperor went back and did not 
get away from the Eoyal nursery until half-an-hour 
later. That I was told was the only occasion on 

137 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

which the Emperor was ever late for a great mihtary 
function. 

The Empress, as I have already said, was not very 
fond of her only daughter ; the fact is that Victoria 
Luise, as she grew up, found that she could usually 
get her own way in anything about which she was 
specially keen through her father. 

This annoyed the Empress. She never attempted 
to interfere with the decisions of the Kaiser, but 
when the Princess obtained her father's consent 
to her doing anything that her mother objected to, 
she and her mother would often pass several days 
without speaking to one another. 

The secretary's department in the Royal estab- 
lishment was from all I heard extremely well 
organized. An enormous correspondence was dealt 
with most expeditiously. All sorts and conditions 
of persons wrote to the Emperor on a variety of 
topics. The Emperor rather encouraged these 
correspondents, and every one received if possible 
an immediate reply. In any case, a correspondent's 
letter, except it came obviously from a lunatic, as 
was sometimes the case, always received a reply. 

People would write to the Emperor on educational 
matters, social questions, matters relating to public 
health, and on many other affairs of public interest. 

The points raised in these letters or the sugges- 
tions they contained were dealt with by officials 
in the secretary's department who were specially 
well informed on all such subjects, and the Emperor's 

138 



About the Neues Palais 



views on them were sent to his correspondents. 
By doing this the Kaiser beheved, and I dare say 
he was right, that he was able to direct and in- 
fluence pubhc opinion to no inconsiderable extent. 

I knew a gentleman in Berlin who wrote to the 
Emperor pointing out certain things he objected 
to in the teaching at the State-controlled schools 
in Germany; what he chiefly objected to was the 
way in which modern German history was taught, 
which, he said, tended to create in a child's mind too 
much of a bias against other countries. 

That was exactly what it was intended to do, and 
it had the thorough approval of the Emperor. 
This gentleman received a long letter from one of 
the secretaries at the Imperial Schloss pointing out 
the various and special advantages of the existing 
system of teaching in the public schools, and so 
impressive was the letter that the gentleman I 
have mentioned was converted to the Imperial 
views on the subject. 

Business people when they wrote to the Emperor 
to make complaints of how local legislation ad- 
versely affected their business, or to suggest how 
their position might be improved by legislation, 
received invariably sympathetically worded replies, 
and sometimes a correspondent would be asked to 
call at the Imperial Schloss and put his views 
before one of the Royal secretaries. 

In all sorts of ways the Imperial secretarial 
department was used to keep the Emperor in close 

139 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

and intimate touch with the general public. For 
example, the organizers of a charitable bazaar had 
no difficulty in getting the Emperor and Empress 
to sign photographs of themselves for sale at the 
bazaar. 

I knew some members of a committee who 
organized a large bazaar in aid of the children's 
hospitals in Berlin. They sent a hundred postcard 
photographs of the Emperor and Empress to the 
secretary's department, and asked that their 
Majesties should sign them. They received all the 
photographs back duly signed by return of post. 

The secretary's department at the Imperial 
Schloss was organized some years ago by one of the 
leading business experts in Berlin, and he goes to 
the Schloss at regular intervals to bring the whole 
system of dealing with the correspondence up to 
date, and to make it as efficient as possible. All 
the latest devices in typing and copying machines 
are in use at the Schloss. The Kaiser's personal 
correspondence is conducted by two secretaries. 
The Emperor hates writing letters himself, and 
rarely does so except when writing to relatives; 
his favourite mode of communicating with either 
his relatives or intimate friends is by telegraph. 

The Emperor's theory in regard to his personal 
correspondence is that if he has nothing of impor- 
tance to say there is no need to write to any one, 
and if he has an important communication to make 
it is better and more rapidly done by telegraph. 

140 



About the Neues Palais 



One advantage this method of correspondence 
had for the Emperor was that it saved him the 
trouble of composing a letter. The Kaiser found 
anything in the nature of literary composition a 
difficult task. Often when dictating a letter he 
would walk up and down his room endeavouring 
to frame a sentence without being able to do so, 
and ultimately would leave it to his secretary to 
complete. When compelled to write a letter to 
some of his relations, he would often leave the 
actual composition of it to his secretary and copy 
it out himself. 



141 



CHAPTER \ I 

ABOUT THE NEUES PALAIS {continued) 

One of the most notable characteristics of the 
Kaiser was his profound belief in his own greatness. 
This was a genuine and sincere belief. He is 
perfectly assured that whatever he attempts to do 
he can do better than any one else. Apart from 
the fact that he regards himself as the greatest 
living monarch and the greatest natural-born 
ruler of men, he is quite assured that his know- 
ledge of music, painting and history, subjects to 
which he has devoted a little attention, is greater 
than that possessed by any one else. He also 
beheves himself to be the best shot in the 
w^orld. 

As a matter of fact the Kaiser is a good shot, 
as well he might be, for he had the best of training 
when he was quite a young boy, and he has had 
a wide and extensive experience as a sportsman. 
But the Kaiser would by no means be content with 
having merely the reputation of being a good shot ; 
he must be the best shot in the world. Once 
some one sent him an English illustrated paper 
containing an article on " Kings as Shots " in 
which the Kaiser was mentioned as one of the 

142 



About the Neues Palais 



three best shots among ruHng monarchs. The 
Kaiser declared himself to be quite amused with 
the article. If the writer of the article knew 
anything about the subject, he declared, he would 
have known that no other monarch was in the 
same class with him as a shot. 

The Kaiser's belief in his own powers is really 
marvellous. He has often said to members of his 
household that if he had not been a king he 
might have written better music or painted better 
pictures or written better plays than any other 
musician, painter or dramatist. 

He said things like that quite seriously, and I 
think in some ways those about him were half 
inclined to believe that they were true. 

He was very fond of antique objects of art, 
especially old china ornaments, and regarded himself, 
of course, as a good judge of such things. 

In this connection I heard a rather amusing 
little story about a couple of Dresden china vases 
that the Emperor purchased from one of the 
Grand Duchesses with whom he was staying on a 
visit some few years ago. 

The Kaiser saw a pair of Dresden vases in the 
Grand Duchess's boudoir to which he took a fancy, 
and he offered to buy them, and asked the Grand 
Duchess to name her price. 

Now it so happened that this Grand Duchess 
was rather extravagant, and had some debts in 
Paris, London and Berlin, and she suggested to 

143 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

the Kaiser that she would let him have the vases 
for the amount of her debts, a list of which she 
promised to send him later on. 

The . Kaiser agreed, on the condition that the 
debts were not too heavy, and he took away the 
vases with him. A month or so later he received 
the list of debts, which amounted to about £2000. 
The Kaiser thereupon promptly sent the vases 
back, pointing out that the total amount of the 
Grand Duchess's debts exceeded the value of the 
vases by several hundreds of pounds. 

The Kaiser has been taken in on several occasions 
in his deals over objects of art. He purchased a 
pair of Louis XV chairs some years ago from the 
proprietor of a small hotel somewhere in a little 
town in East Prussia for £500. The owner of the 
chairs described them as historical pieces of furni- 
ture, and showed the Emperor some documents 
that appeared to substantiate his story. 

It was not until a year after he had purchased 
them that the Emperor learned that the hotel 
keeper told the same tale to others, but none of 
them apparently had believed it. The chairs were 
simply very good reproductions. 

I heard a good art expert, who had seen most 
of the antique objects of art that the Kaiser had 
purchased, say that nearly a quarter of them were 
reproductions, and that in regard to the others 
the Kaiser had in most instances paid very ex- 
cessive prices. 

144 



About the Neues Palais 



The Kaiser also greatly prided himself on his 
skill at games of cards. 

I believe he could play well that most difficult 
of all card games, Skatt; it is a German game, 
and is played very little outside Germany, and is 
almost unknown in England. There were, however, 
only about half-a-dozen members of the household 
who played Skatt. The Kaiser's favourite card 
game was auction bridge; he played this game 
wretchedly. There were some first-rate auction- 
bridge players in the Imperial household, but the 
Emperor fully believed he was better than any of 
them. His belief in his ability as a card-player, 
however, was to some extent justified by his 
extraordinary and continual luck. A member of 
the household told me that when King Edward 
was on a visit to the Emperor in 1909, the late 
monarch told the Kaiser that he was absolutely 
the best card-holder he had ever played with. 

Curiously enough the Emperor with all his luck 
at cards never played for high stakes. I heard 
that when he was Crown Prince he sometimes 
gambled for very high stakes, and on one or two 
occasions w^on a great deal of money at some 
club in Berlin. But since he succeeded to the 
throne the Emperor has apparently discounten- 
anced gambling not only at Court, but among his 
own immediate friends. 

In the evenings the Kaiser would sometimes 
play auction bridge w4th a few members of his 
K 145 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

entourage in his private sitting-room, and the 
stakes were hmited to a mark a hundred. The 
cards supphed to the Imperial household were 
specially made — they had red backs ornamented 
with an eagle in gold, and they cost five marks a 
pack. 

The Empress never joined in these games, but 
she would occasionally take a hand in a game 
with some ladies of the household after dinner. 

The Kaiser, as I have already said, at times en- 
couraged rowdiness and vulgarity among his friends, 
but would strongly resent any undue familiarity 
that any one might take with him. On more than 
one occasion people who were guilty of a lack of 
proper respect towards the All Highest were 
promptly dismissed from his presence, and were 
never permitted to meet him again. 

I was told a story of a Baroness B , a well- 
known lady in the best Berlin society, and who 
was a rather frequent guest at the Neues Palais, 
who some few years ago fell out of the Royal 
favour for making an unduly familiar remark to 
the Kaiser. 

The Baroness, who by the way was a great 
friend of the Princess Victoria Luise, was a young, 
attractive-looking and very athletic lady, and went 
in for all sorts of games, as many very smart and 
fashionable women did at that time in Berlin. 
One day the Baroness was lunching at the Neues 
Palais, and the conversation turned on an athletic 

146 



\it^ 



About the Neues Palais 



meeting for ladies that some ladies, including the 
Baroness, were then endeavouring to arrange. 

The Kaiser gave it as his opinion that the idea 
of holding such a meeting was absurd, and said 
that women could not run properly, and when 
they did run they generally looked rather ridiculous. 

This statement nettled the Baroness, and she 
suggested that if the Kaiser would wear a skirt 
she would race him across one of the lawns, and 
offered to bet him £5 thai she would win the race. 

Now in certain moods the Kaiser might have 
joined in the laugh that the Baroness's suggestion 
raised, and regarded it as a good joke. But as a 
matter of fact he did nothing of the kind. He 
rose from the table and left the room, and later 
sent a message to the Baroness through an equerry 
to say that he regarded what she had said as 
grossly impertinent and that she would not again 

be received at Court. The Baroness B was 

rigidly excluded from all Court entertainments 
afterwards. I dare say the Kaiser was rather glad 
to have the opportunity of dismissing her from 
the Court, for he did not approve of the friendship 
that existed between her and Victoria Luise. The 
Emperor was, indeed, extraordinarily particular 
about the friendships that his daughter made. 
Any lady with the least reputation of being rowdy 
or fast he would never allow to become friends 
with his daughter. 

The Kaiser entertained, generally speaking, by 

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Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

no means a high opinion of women. I have heard 
it said that he could never bear to be longer in the 
presence of any woman, except his daughter, than 
a couple of hours. To the ladies of the Court he 
was often extremely rude. In conversation he 
would frequently flatly contradict them and dis- 
miss what they said as so much nonsense. With 
ladies whom he knew less intimately and w^ho were 
occasionally guests at Court he was more polite, 
but he rarely talked much to them. 

A lady who knew how to gain the Kaiser's 
favour would never attempt to get into con- 
versation with him, even when encouraged to do 
so by the Kaiser. She knew that the best thing 
for her to do was to say as little as possible, to 
agree to everything the Emperor said, and to 
laugh heartily at any of his jokes. 

Both the Kaiser and Empress were avowed oppo- 
nents of the modern feminist movement. The 
Kaiser regarded it as a sign of decadence in a nation, 
and did all he could to discountenance the move- 
ment in Germany. He often cited the progress of 
the feminist movement in England as a sign of our 
decay. He met a lady at dinner in Berlin early in 
the year of the outbreak of war who was deeply in 
sympathy with the suffragette militant movement 
in England. 

The Kaiser heard the lady express views at 
dinner that so much annoyed him that afterwards 
he requested that the lady should be presented to 

148 



About the Neues Palais 



him, so that he might inform her that he had 
heard some of the things she had said at dinner 
about the suffragette movement and that h.e 
entirely disagreed with her. 

The lady apologized for having said anything 
that displeased His Majesty, who then dismissed 
her from his presence saying, " We still stick to 
the idea in Germany that a woman who can scrub 
floors well is a much more useful person than a 
woman who can make speeches." 

A member of the Imperial household who was 
in England at the end of 1909 brought back on 
his return to Potsdam some very exaggerated 
accounts of the suffragette disturbances in England 
for the benefit of the Emperor, who was always 
pleased to hear of social disturbance and unrest 
anywhere except, of course, in Germany. The 
stories that the returned member of the Imperial 
household brought to his master were ridiculously 
untrue. For example, one story was that two 
militant suffragettes attired as men had kidnapped 
Prince Henry, the King's third son, in St. James's 
Park, and had avowed their intention of keeping 
the Prince prisoner until the vote was granted to 
women. 

But the story that particularly interested the 
Kaiser, I believe, was one to the effect that bands 
of armed women were now going about the country, 
and that a general armed revolt of the militants 
was regarded as almost a certainty by the authori- 

149 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

ties. The Kaiser later, in addressing a deputation 
from some Ladies League at the Neues Palais, cited 
this state of affairs in England as a warning of how 
important it was for them in Germany to see that 
foolish and ignorant women were not allowed to 
bring their country and government into contempt 
and ridicule as they had done in England. When 
I heard of this speech I could not help wishing that 
Miss Christabel Pankhurst and a dozen of her 
most devoted followers had been at the Palace; 
if they had been I am quite sure that the Kaiser 
would have ascertained that these " foolish and 
ignorant women " were more courageous and for- 
midable persons than he imagined them to be. 

Beauty in a woman made very little impression 
on the Kaiser. His admiration for women who 
have beautiful hands and arms is well known, but 
it has never been sufficiently ardent to allow of 
the possessor of the most perfectly shaped limbs 
gaining any real or lasting influence over the 
Emperor. 

A very beautiful lady whom the Kaiser met at, 
I think, the Bavarian Court, attracted his favour- 
able regard, and he paid her quite marked attention. 
This lady, a little while later, was received at the 
Court at Berlin. The Kaiser apparently had for- 
gotten the fact that he had met her only a few 
weeks previously, and greeted her as if he had 
never met her before, much, no doubt, to the 
lady's chagrin and disappointment. The Emperor 

150 



About the Neues Palais 



subsequently took no notice of her. I was told 
that when the Kaiser returned from a visit to the 
English Court in 1911 he was asked by the Princess 
August Wilhelm if there were many beautiful 
women at the new Court. He replied that he had 
been so busy whilst he was at the English Court 
that he had not time to make a study of the faces 
of the ladies, but he was sure that they were all 
beautiful. 

It is, indeed, rather a curious thing how little 
influence women had over the Kaiser. There were 
undoubtedly many ladies about the Court who had 
a real and genuine admiration for the War Lord, 
and some who certainly greatly exerted themselves 
to obtain his special favour and regard, but not 
one ever succeeded in gaining more than his most 
passing attention. 

Men had far more influence with the Emperor. 
Von Jagow, for example, the present Chief of the 
German Foreign Office, had a very considerable 
influence with him — so, of course, has the Chan- 
cellor, Dr. Bethmann-Hollweg ; and Herr Ballin 
and Prince Furstenberg were men whose opinion 
and counsels had great weight with the Emperor. 
I remember once seeing the Kaiser driving down 
the Unter den Linden in his motor-car; suddenly 
he had the car stopped, and he beckoned to a man 
on the pathway who ran to the Royal car at once, 
and getting into it drove away with the Kaiser. 
The man was a delicate-looking person, dressed 

151 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

in a rather badly fitting frock coat. A lady whom 
I was with said to me, " Do you know who that 
man is? " I replied that I had not the least idea. 
" Well," she said, " that is von Jagow, the Foreign 
Secretary, and I expect the Kaiser is going to take 
him back to lunch with him at the Schloss." 
The Kaiser would certainly never have stopped his 
car to speak to a lady. 

Von Jagow, Dr. Bethmann-Hollweg and Herr 
Ballin, Admiral von Tirpitz and other special 
friends of the Emperor would often be invited to 
occupy seats at the Royal box at the Opera House, 
an honour comparatively rarely paid to ladies who 
were not royalties or members of the Royal 
household, except when the Kaiser was not present. 
The Empress would then sometimes invite some 
friends of hers to the Royal box. 

The Emperor or Empress, by the way, rarely 
went to the opera on a Strauss night. In his 
early days Dr. Strauss's music was not well received 
in Germany. After the rehearsal of Electra, at 
which the Kaiser was present, the Royal verdict 
on the opera was that it was simply a discordant 
uproar. Later the general public came to appre- 
ciate Strauss opera; but the Kaiser stuck to his 
original opinion, and he and the Empress per- 
sistently avoided the opera on Strauss nights. 

Von Hollweg was certainly one of the most 
intimate friends of the Emperor. The Chancellor 
has a country house where the Emperor would 

152 



About the Neues Palais 



occasionally become his guest for two or three 
days. After the gathering of German royalties 
in England in 1913 the Kaiser stayed with the 
Chancellor for a couple of days, and among the 
guests asked to meet the Emperor on that occa- 
sion were Admiral von Tirpitz, Count Zeppelin and 
General von Hindenburg. The Kaiser, by the 
way, did not regard Count Zeppelin with any great 
favour; this, I think, was due to an incident that 
happened some few years ago when the Count and 
the Kaiser were fellow-guests at the country house 
of some Baron — I forget his name — who was greatly 
interested in the development of the Count's 
airships, and had helped to finance him when he 
was making his early experiments. 

It had been arranged that the Count should 
bring a model of an airship, or some important 
part of an airship, which he had just completed at 
that time. The Count, however, did not do so, 
and he explained to the Kaiser that he had not 
done so because there were some alterations he 
intended to make in it, and he did not wish any 
one to see the model until it was perfected. The 
Kaiser, however, was particularly anxious to see 
the model and requested the Count to send for it 
at once ; but this Count Zeppelin absolutely refused 
to do. He said that on no account could he 
possibly allow any one to see the model until it 
was perfected, but that he would then make 
arrangements to let the Kaiser see it at once. 

153 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

The Emperor was so annoyed that he left the 
Baron's house, and for some considerable time 
afterwards he refused to see or meet Count Zeppelin 
anywhere. It was only when it became evident 
that the Count's airships were going to play an 
important part in Germany's military organization 
that the Kaiser consented to meet him again. 
It was Prince Henry of Prussia who brought the 
two together at a dinner at the Prince's house. 
Outwardly the Kaiser and Count Zeppelin have 
since been on the most friendly terms, but the 
Kaiser never forgives a man who so offends him 
as the Count did, and it is only the necessity of 
circumstances that compels him to meet the Count 
in a friendly way. 

Count Zeppelin is very well off ; he is an extremely 
shrewd and capable man of business, and has been 
fortunate in his investments. Latterly he has 
devoted himself entirely to his airships, but 
formerly he was interested in several commercial 
undertakings. One of these was a tea-shop syndi- 
cate, out of which I believe he made a fairly large 
fortune. 

The Count's personal appearance by no means 
suggests that he is a sort of arch baby-killer. He 
is a white-haired, pleasant, kindly looking elderly 
gentleman. I have seen him on several occasions 
strolling in the different Royal parks, often talking 
to children. I saw him on one occasion setting 
some children to run races in one of the parks and 

154 



About the Neues Palais 



dispense prizes to them, all apparently from his 
pocket, much to the delight of the children. 

Dr. Bethmann-Hollweg was a very different 
sort of man from his Royal master and friend. 
The Chancellor is a most retiring man, lives very 
quietly, hates display of any sort, and goes very 
little into society. I should imagine that he 
cannot greatly enjoy the honour of entertaining 
the Emperor, who must be a disturbing sort of 
guest for a man like the Chancellor to receive. 

Indeed, the Emperor must be a rather disturbing 
sort of guest for any one to receive. 

When I was with the Princess Margarethe at 
Gotha I was told that when the Emperor had 
visited the Grand Duke some months previously 
he had come with a suite of ten officials and twelve 
servants — an unusually small suite for the Emperor 
to bring, but this visit was quite a quiet and 
private one. 

Before the Emperor visits even his most intimate 
friends, two equerries go to the house which he is 
to visit and make a thorough and careful preparation 
for the reception of their Imperial master. 

There must always be five rooms at least provided 
for the Kaiser's personal use — a bedroom, dressing- 
room, writing-room, a valet's room and detective's 
room. These rooms must be in one suite, the 
outer of which must command admission to the 
others, and which is occupied by the two detectives 
who accompany the Kaiser everywhere. Besides 

155 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

these rooms, which are known during the visit as 
the Kaiser's rooms, there must be at least twenty 
rooms set apart for his suite of officials and servants. 

When the Emperor is accompanied by the 
Empress greater accommodation is required. The 
personal suite of apartments must then include a 
wardrobe-room, a room for the Empress's dresses 
and a drawing-room. The door of each of the 
rooms in the private suite must be marked on 
the outside by having either an eagle painted on 
it or a silver-plated eagle fixed on it. 

The Kaiser always brings his own wines with 
him when visiting a friend unless he knows that 
his host has a very good cellar, and the chief chef 
from Berlin is invariably included in the Imperial 
suite except when the Kaiser goes to stay with 
any reigning sovereign. 

I heard a rather amusing story about the Kaiser's 
chef when the Emperor went to stay with the 
King of Saxony some years ago. 

The King of Saxony, before the visit, suggested 
to the Kaiser that he should bring his chief chef 
with him, as the chef at the Saxony Court happened 
then to be rather an indifferent culinary artist. 

The chef of the Saxon monarch was addicted to 
drink, and he celebrated the Imperial visit by 
getting excessively drunk the night of the Kaiser's 
arrival. When he ascertained that the Kaiser's 
chef had come to prepare the Royal banquet the 
King of Saxony's chef became furiously angry, 

156 



About the Neues Palais 



and declared that on no account would he permit 
him to do so. 

This might not have greatly mattered had the 
chef been sober, but in his inebriated condition 
he was totally unfit to prepare the dinner. The 
Kaiser's chef, therefore, insisted on at least helping 
to get it ready. It was ten o'clock before the 
dinner was ready; it would not have been ready 
then, only that the King of Saxony's chef had 
fortunately fallen asleep in a chair in the kitchen 
whilst arguing with the chef from Berlin as to 
who should prepare the dinner. 

The Kaiser will sometimes be seized with a 
mood in which he will desire complete solitude. 
In this mood he will allow no one to approach 
him. Sometimes in such a mood he will rush off 
to some Royal residence where he can be almost 
completely alone, and where he will stay as long as 
the mood lasts, which is never for more than a 
couple of days. These moods are not affected as 
other of the Kaiser's moods so often are. They 
are generally the results of severe attacks of depres- 
sion to which the Emperor has been subject for 
many years, but which have become increasingly 
recurrent of late. 

In these fits of depression the Kaiser will walk 
up and down his room for hours, muttering to 
himself, or sit still in a chair gazing into vacancy. 
When in such a mood he will eat or drink nothing 
No one dare come to him without being summoned. 

157 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 



Or he will, when darkness sets in, go out and walk 
about the garden at the Imperial Schloss, or in 
the park at the Neues Palais for half the night. 

I heard of one of these depressing moods in the 
early part of 1914. The Kaiser actually made all 
arrangements to leave Germany for a year, and 
travel incognito with his brother, Prince Henry 
of Prussia. It might have been for Germany and 
for Europe a great blessing had he done so. 

In these moods the Kaiser will occasionally go 
into the private chapel at the Imperial Schloss, 
and will sit there for a couple of hours. I know 
he has been seen there by himself on his knees, 
praying. I really think that the Kaiser does 
honestly and sincerely believe that he stands in 
much closer relations with his Creator than other 
mortals. 

I heard the Kaiser's character as a religious man 
once discussed by a clergyman in Berlin, who 
knew the Emperor intimately. He said that there 
are moments when the Kaiser is so carried away 
by religious feelings, and by the belief that it is 
the desire of the Almighty that he should do 
certain things, or act in a certain way, that it 
makes it extremely difficult for his advisers to 
persuade him to the contrary if they think that 
the Kaiser's action would be detrimental to 
Germany's interests. 

This clergyman said that the Kaiser had once 
told him that there were several occasions on wJiich 

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About the Neues Palais 



he had done things which he was sure the Almighty 
disapproved, because it had been urged on him to 
act as he did by others, and that he often repented 
bitterly of having acted against his religious 
instincts. 

How far this statement was really true I don't 
know. One finds it difficult to believe that the 
Emperor is the sort of man who could be per- 
suaded to do anything that he was much opposed 
to doing, unless it was made quite clear to him 
that it would be to the disadvantage of the general 
policy that he has been pursuing for years to do 
it, and then he simply throws over his religious 
promptings, because he sees that to follow them 
would be against his interests. 

There is no doubt that the Emperor has a great 
love for religious observances. Nearly all the Court 
functions, especially such things as military reviews, 
were often preceded by some sort of religious 
service at the Imperial Schloss or the Neues Palais. 

The Emperor, of course, never neglects to attend 
divine service on Sundays, or on special festivals, 
and he personally supervised the religious training 
of his children with great care, if not, in the case 
of the Crown Prince at all events, with very 
fortunate and happy results. 

In his younger days the Kaiser would read a 
portion of the Bible to his children every Sunday 
afternoon, and deliver them what a lady of the 
Court told me was a really most impressive address. 

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Seven Years at the Prussian Court 



Perhaps the most faithful and truest description 
of the Kaiser's behefs, rehgious and otherwise, was 
given to me by Herr Goltzer. He said the Kaiser 
beheves in himself, in Germany, and in God, and 
he has jumbled all his beliefs up in a w^ay that leaves 
his belief in himself the most visible one in him. 

Nothing pleases the Kaiser better than for people 
to discuss in his presence how he would read in 
history. He would encourage such discussions at 
dinner or in the reception-room; afterwards, and 
because it pleased him, they would be carried on 
by various members of the household. Naturally 
such discussions in the presence of the subject of 
them could not be but flattering to the Emperor, 
and he enjoyed such flattery profoundly. He 
would join in the discussion himself, and point 
out that as Germany had risen to a greater position 
in the world than she ever before occupied during 
his reign, his name would naturally be associated 
with her advancement, and then he would leave 
it to others to discuss how historians would deal 
with his personal character, and with him as a 
man and sovereign. It always pleased the Kaiser 
to be likened to any great monarch, such as Charle- 
magne, or Julius Caesar. In making comparisons 
of this sort, of course favourable to the Kaiser, 
guests and members of the household would find 
the easiest way of adding their contribution to the 
discussion. 

The Emperor always declared that Queen Eliza- 

160 



About the Neues Palais 



beth was England's greatest sovereign, and that 
she had never had a great one since. I heard him, 
at the opening of a new school at Potsdam, say in 
a short speech that next to the history of Germany 
the most important history to study was that of 
England. " The study of English history is very 
instructive," he said, " because England is a country 
that rose to greatness without any great sovereign 
if we except Queen Elizabeth." 

But whilst he commended the study of history 
to others, he would never trouble to make a careful 
study of it himself, even the history of his own 
country. I was told that the Kaiser would often 
declare in one of his boasting fits that great sove- 
reigns like himself were ever too busy making 
history to give much time to the study of past 
history. The Kaiser, I was told, was an ill-read 
man — he has always detested the study of books, 
though he is the possessor of a fine library. 

Amongst the books in the library at the Neues 
Palais is the first edition of a book called The 
Prussian Bureaua^acy, by Carl Heinzen. This book 
w^as sent anonymously to the Kaiser about ten 
years ago. The Emperor, after glancing through 
its pages, was about to throw the book away, but 
his librarian persuaded him not to, as it was a 
first edition, and of some value. Heinzen pub- 
lished his book on Prussian bureaucracy some time 
about 1840, and the penalty he paid for doing so 
w^as that he had to leave Germany. Directly after 
L 161 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

the book was published a warrant was issued for 
his arrest, and he fled to France. An Enghsh 
friend of mine in Berhn showed me in an old copy 
of some English magazine a translation of part of 
a character sketch of a lady supposed to be Prussia 
that Heinzen wrote after he left Germany. One 
sentence in the skit I well remember — it somewhat 
answers to the description of Modern Germany. 
As to the external appearance of the lady, she 
generally appears as an evangelical person in the 
uniform of a soldier. She is in the habit of carry- 
ing a corporal's cane, w^hich has some similitude to 
a knout. Nearly all the English classics were in the 
library in the Imperial Schloss. Shakespeare's Works, 
complete in twenty volumes, bound in rich red 
morocco, w^as a present from Queen Victoria. One 
of the last gifts from Bismarck to the Kaiser was 
a copy of Milton's Poems. A set of Mr. Rudyard 
Kipling's Works was a gift to the Kaiser from a 
member of the household, when he returned from 
a visit to England the same year as I went to 
Potsdam. 

' There was a deep, comfortable sofa near the 
window of the library. There the War Lord could 
rest sometimes before dinner at the end of a long 
day spent in attending military parades, or various 
public functions. The Kaiser would rest his legs 
on the head of the sofa, and lie with his head on 
the seat and hands clasped underneath it. In this 
position the Emperor would recline sometimes for 

162 



About the Neues Palais 



a couple of hours, beguiling the time with cigars, 
and chatting to members of his household. The 
Emperor has frequently been bidden by his doctor 
to give up smoking, or to limit his consumption 
of tobacco to two cigars a day. The Kaiser obeys 
this injunction of his doctor by fits and starts, but 
never for long. When he does adopt his doctor's 
advice he becomes so nervously depressed and 
irritable that his entourage are glad to see him 
resume his normal consumption of six or seven 
cigars a day. 

A couple of years ago the Emperor had some- 
thing approaching a bad nervous breakdown, and 
he went to stay at Ischl in Austria, as the guest 
of Francis Joseph. The Emperor went incognito, 
and the visit was kept strictly secret. When the 
Emperor returned to Berlin in three weeks' time 
he had broken himself of the habit of smoking; 
the rumour got about that he had dropped smoking 
completely under his doctor's advice, which was 
perfectly true, but the report annoyed the Emperor 
extremely. He could not tolerate the idea that 
people should think he had been compelled for 
his health's sake to give up smoking, and to prove 
that there was no necessity for him to do so he 
began smoking again. 

But though the Emperor cannot bear the notion 
that people should think that he is taking any 
special care of his health, both he and the Empress 
are always adopting some new health fad. 

163 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

When I first went to Potsdam the barley-water 
fad was in full swing. At the Neues Palais and the 
Imperial Schloss, in the Emperor's and Empress's 
personal apartment, big silver jugs of barley water 
were placed every morning. Almost whenever the 
Kaiser during the day entered the room he had a 
copious draught of barley water. 

It cannot have done him much harm : possibly 
it did him good, but this particular fad only lasted 
three months, by then the Kaiser was so thoroughly 
tired of barley water that it was almost dangerous 
to mention the drink to him. The Empress had 
been more moderate in her consumption of it, and 
I believe still drinks some two or three times i 

every day. 

The Emperor was badly smitten with the fresh- ^ 

air fad some years ago. This was, I think, in 1912, 
and it was the inspiring praises of the Queen of 
Bulgaria concerning the benefit one's health derived 
through admitting as much fresh air as possible 
into one's dwelling rooms, that induced the Kaiser 
for a time to make the Neues Palais a very draughty 
place indeed. 

After visiting the Kaiser and Empress at Potsdam 
the Queen of Bulgaria went to stay with the 
Princess Altenburg at the Schloss Serrahin. The 
Princess Victoria INIargarethe was also a guest at 
the Schloss Serrahin at the same time, and I accom- 
panied her. I remember hearing about the craze 
that the Queen of Bulgaria had for open windows, 

164 



i 



About the Neues Palais 



and how every window in her own suite of rooms 
had to be kept as widely open as possible day and 
night. The fresh-air craze, however, did not last a 
very long time at the Neues Palais. It resulted 
in the Kaiser getting an attack of rheumatism from 
sitting in his writing-room after dinner in a bad 
draught that laid him up for a couple of days, and 
subsequently the opening and shutting of the 
windows was conducted on normal lines. 

The Emperor, apart from occasional throat 
trouble and nervous attacks, enjoys excellent 
health. He is fond of taking exercise, either riding 
or walking before breakfast, and this habit one of 
the doctors at the Neues Palais told me has con- 
tributed largely to keeping the Emperor in good 
health. Breakfast, by the way, at the Neues 
Palais is a rather peculiar meal, as it is in all the 
German Royal households Avhere I have stayed. 
The Kaiser and Empress and every member of the 
Imperial family breakfasted in their private rooms. 
There is nothing very unusual in this, but the 
breakfasts were all served at different hours. The 
Kaiser's breakfast hour varied from eight to eleven 
o'clock. Sometimes his breakfast would consist of 
sausages and coffee, sometimes of coffee and a few 
biscuits ; another day he would consume a grilled 
sole, a pie of some sort, bananas and cream and 
bottle of some red wine. The quantity of food 
that the Kaiser took at breakfast varied greatly 
every day. On his very bad days, when he felt 

165 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

extremely upset about anything or was in a nervous, 
depressed condition, he would not have any break- 
fast. The Empress always had a good breakfast. 
Fish, bacon and eggs and a fruit salad was her 
customary breakfast, but she would vary it by 
having pork pies instead of fish. She had eggs and 
bacon every morning. Sometimes she would have 
breakfast as late as two o'clock, but her regular 
hour was half-past eight. She scarcely tasted 
anything at lunch, an apple and a few biscuits 
was her usual lunch. 

Thirty servants were engaged in serving and 
preparing breakfast every day at the Neues Palais. 
After breakfast the Empress very frequently went 
to visit some institution in the poorer parts of 
Berlin or Potsdam. There is no doubt that the 
Empress had a very genuine sympathy with the 
very poor, and the poverty in the poorest parts of 
Berlin greatly distressed her. There were scenes 
and incidents she encountered in her investigations 
into the life of the poor which she once declared, 
when talking about them at some charitable meet- 
ing, were a national disgrace, and she went so far 
as to say that while such poverty existed at home 
Imperial matters could have but little interest 
for her. 

This utterance was reported to the Emperor 
and greatly displeased him, and for a time he 
actually forbade the Empress to visit any of the 
poor; but this restriction he later removed. 

166 



About the Neues Palais 



There was a young man employed in a good 
position in one of the Government offices in Berhn, 
I forget which, who was a protege of the Empress, 
though the fact was kept secret from all except 
some members of the Royal household. 

Some years ago when the Empress was driving 
home from one of her visits to the poor districts, 
a young boy was knocked down by her carriage 
horses and rather badly hurt. He was the son of 
a postman w^ho lost his position through an accident, 
and the family were in extremely poor circum- 
stances. The Empress not only had the boy sent 
to a private hospital at her own expense, but when 
he recovered from his injuries she arranged through 
a clergyman to look after him. After he left 
school a couple of years later at fourteen years of 
age, she had him sent to another school at her own 
expense, and eventually he obtained a position in 
the Government service. Neither the boy nor his 
parents ever learned, though they may have 
guessed, who his benefactress was. 

One of the worst faults of the Empress was her 
extreme imp^Atience. Years of training had enabled 
her to curb this in the presence of her Imperial 
lord, but any one else brought into much contact 
with her suffered by it. A lady who was on the 
committee of some charitable institution in ^\hich 
the Empress took a great deal of interest told me 
that Her Majesty sometimes made things very 
disagreeable when she came to committee meetings, 

X6T 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

When the Empress went to a committee meeting 
of this sort, one of her ladies-in-waiting would 
either telephone to the secretary of the committee 
on the morning of the Empress's visit, or write 
to her overnight, saying that the Empress desired 
to meet the ladies of the committee at such an 
hour, and to ask them all to be present. The 
Empress was always extremely punctual, and if any 
lady she desired to see was not present, or arrived 
late. Her Majesty would be exceedingly annoyed. 
One lady summoned to one of the committees to 
meet the Empress, knowing how angry the Empress 
would be if she was not present, left her bed 
although suffering from the effects of a chill, and 
went to meet the Empress. The result of her 
obeying the Royal summons was a three months' 
illness. N 

One advantage that chraitable enterprises gained 
by the Empress taking a special interest in them 
was, of course, in the first place, that funds were 
much more readily collected for them than they 
would have otherwise been; but apart from this, 
there is no doubt that the funds of most charitable 
institutions that the Empress interested herself in 
were always well managed. The Empress would 
go most carefully into the accounts of such institu- 
tions, and when she thought there was any excessive 
charge, the reason of it had to be made quite plain 
to her or there was trouble. One day she was 
looking over the proof sheets of the annual accounts 

168 



About the Neues Palais 



of some institution, and in them under the head 
of general expenses a sum of £7 15.5. was charged, 
as against a sum of £6 odd in the accounts of the 
previous year. The Empress then asked to see 
the actual details of this expenditure, which were 
sent to her. Among the items shown in the 
detailed list was a sum of six marks for a taxi 
fare, for which the correct charge was four marks. 
Five days later, after further inquiries, she obtained 
the dismissal of the treasurer and secretary of the 
institution. The former was unpaid, but the latter 
received £120 per annum, and he strongly protested 
against his dismissal. Ultimately he brought an 
action against the institution, and he had to be 
paid three months' salary in place of notice. The 
Empress was extremely anxious to give evidence 
in the case, but the Kaiser would not permit her 
to do so. On another occasion the Empress used 
such plain and emphatic language towards a lady 
at some committee meeting that she tendered her 
resignation, and without asking permission of the 
Empress left the room. Subsequently the Empress 
wrote and expressed regret for having spoken so 
strongly to her before others, but the lady refused 
to rejoin the committee. This lady was, I believe, 
the only one who had the pluck to resent the most 
uncalled-for and objectionable sort of things the 
Empress would say in one of her impatient moods. 
Most of the ladies on these committees were 
bourgeois people of little social importance, and 

169 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 



never, except at committees, came into social 
contact with the Empress, and I often wondered 
when I heard these stories why they submitted to 
be treated as they were by Her Majesty. Had 
they been of higher social position the case would 
have been different, for for them to fall out with 
the Empress would have meant exclusion from 
Court functions; but these middle-class people had 
nothing of the sort to fear. Perhaps in their own 
class these people would have lost caste if they 
were known to have fallen out with the Empress. 
Anyway, they submitted quietly to be bullied when 
the Empress felt disposed to bully them. It was 
in the nature of all those German Royal people to 
be bullies. Looking back on the years I spent at 
Potsdam I often find it difficult to realize that the 
German Emperor is the man in whose name, and 
with whose sanction and countenance, such things 
have been done as will for centuries be remembered 
by us and the whole of the civilized world with 
loathing and horror. 

After I had been at Potsdam for some little 
time I ceased to take much interest in the Kaiser. 
I saw him fairly often, but I had ceased to regard 
him as a very interesting individual, or a very 
great one. He had quite fallen from the lofty 
pedestal upon which I had once in my imagination 
placed him. But I never thought him to be a 
really bad or wicked person, or capable of counten- 
ancing such deeds as have been done in his name. 

170 



« 



CHAPTER VII 

SERVANTS IN GERMAN ROYAL HOUSEHOLDS 

In no respect does the conduct of any of the 
great German Royal estabhshments differ so con- 
spicuously from that of English Royal households 
as in the treatment of the servants, the lower 
servants especially. In all German Royal house- 
holds all the rough and hard work in the way of 
sweeping, scrubbing and polishing is performed 
by charwomen, and these women are for the most 
part underfed and underpaid. Two marks a day 
is the highest figure any of them receive ; many are 
paid but one mark, and they work twelve hours a 
day, from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., some up to 9 p.m., and 
the reward for these extra hours of work is supper — 
a supper of black bread and beer ! 

The women who, during the week, are required 
to work late are selected by the housekeeper every 
Monday morning, and the penalty for refusing to 
work " over-time " is dismissal from the Royal 
service — a penalty that, owing to a peculiarly 
tyrannous custom in Berlin and Potsdam, practi- 
cally means starvation for the dismissed char- 
w^oman, for in Germany no one will give employment 
to a charwoman who has been dismissed from the 
Royal employ. 

171 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

What happens in most cases where a charwoman 
is dismissed from Royal employ is that, after a 
week's idleness or so, she is taken back and fined, 
perhaps, two weeks' pay for her offence, for which 
she may have been dismissed. These " royal " 
workers are, for the most part, picked from the 
lowest and poorest of the working classes in 
Berlin. 

Outside the back entrance to the Kaiser's palace 
at Potsdam you can see any morning a crowd of 
about fifty women waiting until the door is opened 
at six o'clock, when their daily labour begins. In 
appearance they remind one of the unfortunate 
casuals one may see waiting outside some of our 
workhouses to get a night's lodging. Just the same 
scene might be witnessed outside all the Royal 
palaces at Potsdam. 

I was astounded when I first saw the sort of 
women employed at the palace of the Prince Leopold 
of Prussia to do the kind of work that in good 
English establishments is performed by well-paid 
housemaids. I thought at first they were women 
come to receive some charitable assistance, but I 
was quickly undeceived by the housekeeper, who 
told me that they were the daily workwomen. 
But after a time I became accustomed to this 
curious and to my mind objectionable, if economi- 
cal, method of getting the housework at the palace 
done. These charwomen were entirely under the 
control of the house-steward. They were given 

172 



t 



Servants in German Royal Households 

their dinner at midday in a large room near 
the kitchens, on a table without a cloth, and served 
on tin plates. 

I believe the Crown Princess of Germany treated 
her servants unusually well for a German royalty. 
Her charwomen sat down every day to a fairly 
decently served meal, but even in the Crown 
Princess's establishment the charwomen were 
treated in a way that no Englishwoman would 
stand. They were constantly fined for minor 
offences, such as being a few minutes late in the 
morning, and were sometimes dismissed for a couple 
of weeks. This, of course, was done by the house- 
keeper. 

All the attendance in a German Royal household 
is done by menservants in uniform, and although 
these servants may be well paid, they are often 
treated most brutally by their German Royal 
masters. Some years ago when the Kaiser was at 
Potsdam, he struck one of the footmen in attend- 
ance in the private apartments. The man was 
slightly deaf, a most unpardonable defect in a 
servant placed in personal attendance on the 
Emperor, whose speech is difficult to understand 
except for those familiar with it, and whose temper 
is always roused by any one who does not under- 
stand immediately what he says. This particular 
footman I refer to was placed in attendance in the 
Kaiser's room through some error of the Hof- 
Marschal, who had control of all the menservants. 

173 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 



i 



I 



The Kaiser came into the Palace at about three 
o'clock, after having lunched with some great 
Church dignitary — and he returned in no very 
good temper. 

When he entered his personal writing-room the 
servant was putting some coal on the fire. The 
Emperor told the man to leave the room, but the 
servant did not quite understand what the Kaiser 
said, and, after hesitating for a moment, went on 
settling the fire. The Kaiser then completely lost 
his temper, and going up to the man, first swore 
at him and then struck him. Unluckily for himself 
the servant also had a bad temper, as bad as his 
Royal master, though circumstances usually com- 
pelled him to keep it well under control. But on 
this occasion he failed to do so, and turning on his 
Imperial master, struck him back. Half-an-hour 
later the man was in gaol, and paid for his offence 
by being afterwards sentenced to ten years' penal 
servitude. As a matter of fact, to strike the Kaiser 
is an offence punishable with death, so the servant £ 
got off lightly. 

Prince and Princess Leopold were continually ■ 
falling out with their servants. The Prince would 
dismiss a manservant for the most trivial offence. ^ 
I must explain that in all the Prussian Royal house- 
holds the menservants are entitled to a pension 
after ten years' service, unless they leave of their 
own free will, or are dismissed for some really 
serious offence. If a servant is dismissed, however, 

174 



I 



Servants in German Royal Households 

for some trivial offence by his Royal master, he 
could still regard himself in his service if he wished ; 
he would not get any pay, but at the end of ten 
years he would get his pension. If, on the other 
hand, he took service elsewhere, he forfeited his 
claim to the pension. Most of the servants who 
were dismissed by Prince Leopold would take 
rooms somewhere in Glienicke village and regard 
themselves still in his employment, and be ready to 
re-enter his service whenever he summoned them 
to do so. Usually, after being idle for six months 
or so, the Prince would summon them to re-enter 
his service. 

One unfortunate man who was dismissed by the 
Prince — when leaving a room he allowed the door 
to bang behind him — lived for two years in lodgings 
in the village without being summoned to re-enter 
the Prince's service, and finally he went mad. 

The Leopolds could never keep a man-cook for 
any length of time ; they interfered so much with 
him, and found fault so continually with him, no 
matter how skilful a cook he might be, that he 
usually left in a few days. After I had been at 
Klein Glienicke about a couple of years, the Princess 
Leopold brought a girl, about twenty-seven, named 
Irma, from Austria to be cook at the Schloss. 
Irma was a first-rate cook, but there is no doubt 
that she was in other ways the most good-for- 
nothing person imaginable; moreover, she used to 
drink — from time to time she would get helplessly 

175 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

drunk and have to be put to bed. Yet she always 
managed to keep sober enough to prepare dinner. 
Now it was a curious thing that for some reason or 
other, which I could never quite fathom, the 
Princess Leopold took a great fancy to Irma. The 
girl became, in fact, the " genial confidante and 
general spy " of her Royal mistress. If ever Irma 
fell out with any of the other servants she would 
promptly go to the Princess and tell her something 
against that particular servant, and the Princess 
always believed her. Sometimes the servant would 
be dismissed, or, if not, he (or she) would be 
punished in some way. Irma became, in fact, one 
of the most important persons at Klein Glienicke. 
She was allowed to do always exactly what she 
pleased, and all the other servants had to attend 
on her and take her orders, or else run the risk of 
getting into trouble with the Princess Leopold. 

On one occasion there was a scene which I shall 
never forget. Irma one night received a telegram 
from her home in Austria to say that her mother was 
dying, and asking her to come home at once. The 
result of this telegram was that Irma got helplessly 
drunk and had to be put to bed. When the 
Princess heard about the telegram she took the 
peculiar notion into her head that it was a hoax, 
and had been sent by some of the other servants 
in order to get rid of Irma. The Princess went to 
the servants' quarters and told them this. '' You 
all hate Irma," she exclaimed, " and now some of 

176 



Servants in German Royal Households 

you have done this trick to the poor girl in order to 
get her to go away ; but I shall not allow her to go, 
I shall keep her and inquire into this telegram, and 
I will dismiss any one who has been concerned in 
this horrible deed." The Princess was very ex- 
cited, and came back to her apartments in tears. 
The servants, of course, denied having had anything 
to do with the sending of the telegram, and finally 
the Prince's adjutant, Furstenburg, took up the 
investigation of the matter. A very few questions 
to the servants satisfied him that the telegram was 
a genuine one, and very reluctantly the Princess 
allowed Irma to go to her home the next day. 
Every one hoped that she would not return, but 
a few days later the Princess sent her an urgent 
message to come back, and she did. She was in 
the Princess's employ when I left Potsdam. 

One of the retired servants who had been a foot- 
man at the Neues Palais, and who was given a 
position afterwards as a caretaker in one of the 
Royal parks, was quite an interesting person. He 
was a good linguist, and could speak French and 
English very well, and had been in England on 
several occasions in his younger days w^ith the 
Kaiser, both before and after the Emperor ascended 
the throne. He told me quite a number of stories 
about some of the Emperor's incognito trips to 
England. He told me on one occasion, some time 
in the late 'nineties, he went with the Emperor on 
an incognito trip to London. The Kaiser stayed 
M 177 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

at an hotel, and was accompanied by half-a-dozen 
officials and servants. " I went with the Emperor 
one morning to a tailor's shop," said the servant. 
" It was rather a cheap shop, but the Emperor had 
heard that the tailor kept very good cloth, and 
the Kaiser knew that good English cloth was the 
best in the world. The Kaiser was extremely 
pleased with the patterns he saw, and ordered three 
suits — two knicker suits for shooting, and one 
ordinary lounge suit. The Kaiser asked the tailor 
if he could make them without trying on, and said 
that he was not very particular about their fit, as 
he required the clothes more or less for rough wear ; 
but he was in a hurry for them, and would want 
them in a few days. The tailor promised to send 
the clothes to the hotel where we were staying in 
four days, and assured Count Hollman (the name 
under which the Kaiser was travelling) that the 
suits would fit him quite well. The clothes were 
delivered and paid for four days later, and that 
night we left London for Berlin. It was only a 
few days after his return to Germany that the 
Emperor tried on the clothes, and made the dis- 
covery that they were all hopeless misfits. The 
knickers were about three sizes too large, and the 
coats about three times too small. The Emperor 
gave the clothes to one of his valets, who sold them, 
I think, for £2 to a second-hand clothes shop." 

This servant told me that he was on more than 
one occasion in London when the Emperor was 

178 



Servants in German Royal Households 

Crown Prince. Once the Kaiser was accompanied 
by some members of his grandfather's household, 
who had strict orders not to let the Prince out of 
their sight. But one morning the Prince got up 
at about seven o'clock and managed to get out of the 
hotel without being seen by his guardians, and did 
not return until past midnight. " I never knew 
where the Prince had been to," said the servant, 
" or how he had enjoyed himself, but he appeared 
to be highly satisfied with how he spent what he 
called his day off, which was certainly more than the 
officials who had to look after him were, and they 
took the Prince back to Germany the next day." 

There were very few foreign servants employed 
at any of the German Royal residences. There was 
an English gardener at the Neues Palais, as I have 
said, and another at Klein Glienicke ; but of late years 
especially the Kaiser discouraged as much as he 
could the employment of all but Germans, not only 
at the Prussian Court, but at other Courts where he 
had any influence. 

I remember when I was at the Swedish Court 
with the Princess Margarethe I went one day into 
a cottage to get some tea when I was out cycling, 
and heard from the cottager a rather curious story 
as to how the Kaiser was exerting himself to get 
Germans employed apparently at every Court in 
Europe. 

The cottager told me that a courier from the 
German Court had been at the Swedish Court some 

179 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

little time before this, and he told him that the 
German Emperor had made it unlawful for any 
German to employ an English man or woman, and 
that all the English were leaving Berlin, because 
the Kaiser had found out that they were all spies. 
The cottager expressed himself as being very sur- 
prised when he heard that I was in the employ of a 
German Princess. I was simply astounded at the 
cottager's story about what the courier had said. 
I afterwards asked the Princess what could be the 
object of the Kaiser's courier in telling such false- 
hoods. She confessed that she did not know. 
" You will not be sent away, at all events," she 
said ; " but I have heard that the Kaiser is trying to 
get only Germans employed as far as possible at 
foreign Courts. It is a very natural thing for him 
to do; he is only trying to benefit Germans." And 
so in a way it seemed to me at the time. Now I 
have reason to know that this effort to oust English 
people from being employed about foreign Courts 
was all part and parcel of a vast plan that was 
certainly intended to benefit Germans by sacrificing 
the happiness and liberty of everybody else who 
stood in the way of the Kaiser's ambition. This 
courier or agent of the Kaiser had certainly en- 
deavoured to leave behind him the impression at 
the Swedish Court that the day of a great expansion 
in Germany's Empire and power was at hand. 

I heard nothing of this sort of talk in the Princess's 
establishment, but some of the officials in the King 

180 



Servants in German Royal Households 

of Sweden's household had evidently been im- 
pressed by the Kaiser's agent. One of them, I 
remember, told me very seriously that my country 
would soon be no longer the greatest Power in the 
world. 

" Germany," he said, " is the coming nation of 
the world. Her wealth and her commerce and her 
influence are everywhere expanding." And then 
he added, rather as if repeating a lesson : " It is 
Germany's destiny to rule the world." 

This official was a rather elderly man with kind 
blue eyes and a childlike expression, and I could 
easily understand that he would be readily im- 
pressed by such clever and glib talkers as most of 
the Kaiser's agents were. But the opinion this 
man held seemed certainly to be more or less 
entertained at the Swedish Court. The German 
Empress had great faith in English nurses, and was 
attended by an English lady at the birth of all her 
children. A Mrs. Macdonald, who died about a 
year ago in London, attended the German Empress 
at the birth of four of the German Royal family. 
It is, perhaps, rather a curious reflection just now 
to think that the first person to hold the Crown 
Prince in her arms was an English lady. 

There was one thing that I noticed in all German 
Royal households — the lack of good organization 
and discipline among the servants. This was 
particularly noticeable at Klein Glienicke. There 
the peculiar character and disposition of the Prince 

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Seven Years at the Prussian Court 



and Princess Leopold was the cause of almost 
continual turmoil among the servants; but in no 
German Royal household where I have stayed was 
there the same discipline and order that prevails 
usually in any big English household. Even at 
the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha's residence, which 
was conducted more on the lines of an English 
Royal household than any other in Germany, 
there was rather a lack of order. 

For example, a dispute arose among the servants 
when I was there as to who were to be in attendance 
in the Princess's rooms. This matter apparently 
had not been settled by any one in authority before 
the Princess's arrival, and there was some delay 
before any servants were sent to her rooms — those 
who were first ordered to go declaring that they 
had been bidden to be in attendance in some other 
room. At the Neues Palais the ill-regulated char- 
acter of the servant establishment is well known. 
There are some thirty or forty servants who live 
outside the Schloss, and who only go to it when they 
are notified that their attendance is required, 
which it is at Court functions and usuallv when 
any guests of importance are at the Neues Palais. 
This is a plan adopted in most Royal households, 
and it is quite a simple matter to notify the servants 
when their attendance will be required. But 
what happened on more than one occasion at 
different functions at the Neues Palais was that 
the non-resident servants were not notified to 

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Servants in German Royal Households 

attend, because apparently it was no one's business 
in particular to do this, and at the last moment 
messengers had to be sent to their houses summon- 
ing them to the Schloss; but often the summons 
would not reach all the servants in time, and thus 
on several occasions at Court functions great 
inconvenience was caused at the Neues Palais and 
the Imperial Schloss at Berlin through a shortage 
of attendants. 

There was a most disorderly scene at the cloak- 
rooms at the Imperial Schloss a few years ago, on 
the occasion of a ball. The maids were ordered 
to go on duty at ten o'clock in the evening in the 
ladies' cloak-room, and a similar number of foot- 
men in the gentlemen's room. They were to be 
relieved at twelve o'clock bv a fresh staff of attend- 
ants for each of the cloak-rooms — a larger staff, of 
course, being required when the guests were leaving 
than at their arrival. 

These arrangements so far as they went were 
excellent, but what actually happened was that by 
some error the staff of servants who were to go on 
duty at midnight did not come on duty until 
half-an-hour later, and in the meanwhile the 
attendants on duty left the cloak-room in a body 
at twelve sharp as they had been instnicted they 
could do. At a quarter-past two the Royal guests 
began to take their departure, and in a few minutes 
the cloak-rooms were filled by a crowd of ladies 
and gentlemen looking for their coats and wraps. 

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Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

A most disorderly scene ensued, particularly in 
the ladies' room. Some took to snatching cloaks 
and wraps from each other's hands, and a few so 
utterly lost control of their temper that they actually 
struck at those whom they thought had taken their 
wraps. Word soon reached the equerries of this 
state of affairs, and several hurried to the cloak- 
room and managed to restore some sort of order, 
with the aid of the night staff of attendants who 
had come on the scenes. Such a scene as this, 
which in any ordinary English house would be 
considered most disgraceful, did not greatly disturb 
either the Emperor or Empress. Both were ex- 
tremely angry that the night servants should not 
have been on duty at the proper hour, but when 
some of the details of the cloak-snatching that had 
taken place in the ladies' cloak-room were told to 
the Kaiser, he regarded the affair in the light of a 
rather good joke, and laughed very heartily at the 
whole occurrence. 

The lack of discipline and order among the 
servants in German Royal households is all the 
more surprising when one considers the reputed 
love of orderliness and good organization that is 
generally regarded as one of the prominent traits 
in the German character. In the conduct of public 
and business affairs there is extremely good organiz- 
ation in Germany, but certainly not in the domestic 
management of the Royal households. One reason 
of this is, I think, that there is in the character of 

184 



Servants in German Royal Households 

the German, and more especially the Prussian, 
a " roughness " that makes good domestic manage- 
ment a thing to him of not much account. The 
bad domestic management of German Royal house- 
holds is not a thing that is in the least observable 
to German royalties themselves. Abuse and severe 
punishments are the forces that are relied on to keep 
the servants in order, and they to a certain extent 
succeed : they succeed well enough, at any rate, 
to please the people who employ them. The 
Kaiser's personal servants, who were ruled with a 
rod of iron by his chief groom, were not what in 
England would be called well-trained servants, 
and were guilty from time to time not only of care- 
lessness, but of impertinence and insubordination. 
During the time I was in Potsdam the Kaiser had, 
I believe, to dismiss five of his personal attendants. 
But the worst result of the lack of discipline 
among the servants of the Kaiser and other German 
royalties was the constant fighting among the 
servants themselves that it led to. I was told 
that on one occasion when some ambassador and 
his wife went one afternoon to call on the Emperor 
and Empress at the Neues Palais, they found on 
their arrival the servants in the entrance hall so 
intently engaged in quarrelling among themselves 
that they either did not notice or would not attend 
to the ambassador, who, with his wife, was left 
standing in the entrance hall for some minutes 
until an official of the household came on the 

185 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

scenes. The official, of course, apologized to the 
visitors and showed them himself into the Royal 
presence. 

Most of the German Roval households were 
overstaffed with servants, and this was another 
cause, or rather, I suppose, the result of bad 
management. The Princess Leopold in addition 
to her own maids had three footmen for personal 
attendance, and really they had little or nothing 
to do except when the Princess was travelling. 

The Kaiser likes his personal attendants to speak 
both English and French, though he does not make 
it an absolute rule that they should do so ; but there 
is always at least one among them who can. In 
this connection I heard rather an amusing story 
about a manservant at the Neues Palais who 
stood rather well in the favour of the Emperor. 
The Kaiser often expressed the wish that the man 
had a knowledge of English, and ultimately he 
sent him over to London for three months so that 
he might learn to speak the English language. 
At the end of three months the man wrote to say 
that he was not yet perfect in the language, and 
trusted that the Emperor would allow him to stay 
some little while longer. So another three months 
passed, and the man was then bidden to return at 
once to Berlin. The servant, however, pleaded to 
be allowed a month's more grace. He returned 
then to Berlin, not only with a knowledge of English 
but with an English wife. He then tendered his 

186 



Servants in German Royal Households 

resignation to the Emperor, and subsequently 
started in some business on his own account, a 
knowledge of which he had spent his time in 
England in acquiring at the Emperor's expense. 

I heard that whenever the Emperor paid a 
visit to the English Court or went to stay in England 
as a private guest, one or two of his servants always 
remained behind and settled down in England, 
going either into business here or into service. 

From what I heard I think this must have been 
done at the Kaiser's suggestion, and that some of 
these servants were in the German Secret Service. 
Just before the outbreak of war a number of 
servants who had been in the employ of the Kaiser, 
and who had subsequently obtained employment 
in service in England, returned to Germany; they 
all, except those of military age, re-entered the 
Kaiser's service, and several of those who entered 
the army received commissions. 

Before the Kaiser's visit to the English Court 
in 1911 I was told that one of his own personal 
attendants, who was to accompany him, would not 
return to Berlin as he had arranged to go into the 
service of an " important person " in England. 
I never heard who the important person was, but 
I feel quite sure that the servant's Royal master 
had a definite object in securing him the situation. 
I heard a curious story about a servant who had 
been in the employ of Prince Henry of Prussia, 
who obtained a situation in England some five or 

187 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

six years ago. The man returned to Berlin a year 
or so before the war, but he did not re-enter the 
service of the Prince. Six months after his return 
to Germany he was arrested when leaving Germany 
for America. I never heard precisely what he 
had done, but Herr Goltzer told me that he had 
turned traitor to his own country, and that he had 
been carefully watched since his return from 
England, with the result that when he tried to 
leave Berlin he was arrested. 

The best-managed Royal household about 
Potsdam was that of the Prince Auguste Wilhelm. 
It was quite a small establishment, but it was for 
a Royal German household an orderly and well- 
conducted one. I heard an amusing story about 
one of the Princess's maids — Florence, I think, was 
her name, she was a French girl — which is, perhaps, 
worth relating. 

Florence had a great likeness to the Princess 
Marie Augusta of Anhalt, who married Prince 
Joachim, the Kaiser's youngest son, not long ago. 
Florence, knowing that she was rather like the 
Princess, aped her style of dressing and spent a 
good deal of her money in buying rather expensive 
dresses and hats with this idea in mind. It was 
just a little piece of harmless vanity on her part, 
but it once got her into a somewhat curious scrape. 

Florence went one night with a girl friend and 
the brother of the latter to a theatre, and afterwards 
to supper at a rather expensive restaurant — really 

188 



Servants in German Royal Households 

a much more expensive one than any of them 
could afford; but the brother was rather smitten 
about Florence, and being in Berlin only for a few 
days he wanted to enjoy himself and do things well. 
He was in business in Munich. All were, of course, 
in evening dress, and Florence, partly perhaps with 
the idea of looking as like a princess as possible in 
the eyes of her admirer, had taken particular pains 
to make herself look as like the Princess Marie of 
Anhalt as possible, and with this end in view wore 
a large white feather in her hair exactly in the style 
that the young Princess had then adopted. Now, 
it so happened that the Princess Marie was in Berlin, 
and it was just about this time that the Kaiser 
began to view her as a possible daughter-in-law. 
The Princess had rather the reputation for being a 
bit of a madcap, and the stories of some of her 
adventures had reached the ears of the Emperor 
and Empress, and it was for the very purpose of 
being lectured about these little adventures by 
the Emperor that the Princess had been brought 
to Berlin, where she stayed with a relation and an 
elderly lady-in-w^aiting at a quiet hotel. 

Now, at the restaurant that Florence went to 
the night in question, a lady-in-waiting to the 
Empress and her husband were also at supper, 
and the lady-in-waiting when she saw Florence 
was quite sure that she was the Princess Marie. 
The lady-in-waiting did not know the Princess well, 
and had once been rather snubbed by her at Court. 

189 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

For this reason, perhaps, she hoped now to have her 
revenge on the Princess; at any rate, she went to 
the telephone at the restaurant, rang up the 
Imperial Sehloss, and asked for the Countess 
Brockdorf, and told her that the Princess Marie 
was taking supper with two " awful " looking 
people — a young and rather good-looking man and 
another girl. 

The Countess Brockdorf informed the Empress, 
with the result that when Florence and her com- 
panions were coming out of the restaurant, Florence, 
to her astonishment, was met by an equerry in 
uniform and a lady of the court, who, after bowing 
very politely to her, informed her that they had 
been instructed by the Emperor to bring her at 
once to the Imperial Sehloss to see His Majesty. 

Florence was too astonished and frightened to 
say a word, and she stepped into the waiting car- 
riage after waving a tearful adieu to her friends. 
It was not until she stood in the Royal presence 
that the mistake was discovered. Luckily the 
Emperor that night was in high good humour. 
He laughed uproariously at the lady-in-waiting's 
mistake, called her a meddlesome old body, and 
ordered Florence to be taken to the housekeeper's 
apartments to be given another supper, and after- 
wards sent her home in a carriage to the Princess 
Auguste Wilhelm's establishment. 

But after that Florence gave up copying the 
style of attire favoured by the Princess. 

190 



CHAPTER VIII 

LOVE AFFAIRS AND DRESS BILLS OF GERMAN 

ROYALTIES 

It is one of the boasts of the Kaiser that all 
the marriages of the Prussian Princes and Prin- 
cesses were love marriages. I have no doubt that 
several of them were, but others certainly were 
not. But the Kaiser liked people to think that 
any marriage arranged at the Neues Palais was a 
love marriage, and that its arrangement was 
dictated by no consideration other than that of 
the mutual love and affection which existed 
between the two people concerned. The marriage 
arranged between the Princess Victoria Luise and 
the Duke of Brunswick was trumpeted forth every- 
where as a love marriage, but no one connected 
with any of the German Royal establishments 
believed this for a moment. It was arranged, 
beyond doubt, as every one knew, because the 
Emperor desired to patch up the feud that had 
so long existed between the Hohenzollerns and 
the Cumberland family, so that in the event of a 
European war there might be no trouble between 
the Imperial family and that of any other German 
Royal house. 

Yet, at the same time, I believe that the German 

191 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

Emperor was too fond of his daughter to have 
forced her into an alhance that was positively 
distasteful to her. I do not think that he would 
have done that, but Victoria Luise did not make 
any violent objection to the proposed marriage — 
partly because she thought that if she refused to 
entertain the proposal she might have to accept a 
worse fate, and partly, I dare say, because she 
desired more freedom, and to escape from the 
restrictions imposed on her as a Prussian 
Princess. 

It was some time towards the end of 1912 that 
the Kaiser went to pay a visit to the home of his 
future son-in-law, and on his return he informed 
the Princess of the projected alliance he had in 
•view for her. The Princess, I am told, explained 
to her father that there were at least half-a-dozen 
men, any one of whom she would rather marry, 
but that in point of fact she did not care a pin for 
any of them. 

" That is so much the better," her father replied, 
with a hearty laugh, " for in that case it will 
trouble you less than a pin to marry Ernest 
Augustus." 

Apparently the Princess without any further 
trouble accepted this view of the matter. 

The courtship of a Prussian Princess is con- 
ducted under conditions that must, I fancy, be 
rather trying to an ardent wooer. Under the rules 
of the Prussian Court he must never for a moment 

192 



Love Affairs and Dress Bills of Royalties 

see the Prussian Princess he is courting alone; 
they can only meet in the presence of a lady or 
gentleman-in-waiting, usually of both, or, of course, 
in the presence of relations. 

The Princess Victoria Margarethe met her hus- 
band for the first time at the Schloss Serrahin, 
and I think Prince Reuss fell in love with her at 
first sight. 

Prince Heinrich XXXIII Reuss — to give him his 
full title — was the son of the Prince Heinrich VII 
Reuss, who was one of Bismarck's most able men, 
and was closely in touch with him from 1878 to 
1894. He married the Princess Alexandra Sachsen 
Weimar Eisenach. Through the latter, I believe, 
though I do not quite understand how, their son, 
who married the Princess Margarethe, was heir to 
the throne of Holland until the birth of the 
Princess Juliana, daughter of the Queen of 
Holland. 

Prince Reuss was trained as a doctor, and 
passed all his medical examinations; he entered 
the army subsequently and took a commission in 
the 2nd Dragoon Guards, and afterwards served 
in the diplomatic service. It was Prince Reuss 
before whom the two English doctors. Dr. Elliot 
and Dr. Austin, who were arrested as spies in 
Belgium were tried. The question to be decided 
by the Prince was whether they were doctors or 
not, and he had to put them through a severe 
examination in medicine. They were acquitted, 
N 193 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

and the Prince told me that he thought those two 
Enghsh doctors two of the finest and most honest 
men he had ever met. 

The courtship between the Princess Margarethe 
and the Prince was conducted under difficulties. 
Both the Prince and Princess Leopold for some 
reason objected very strongly to Prince Reuss. 
In the first place, they did not regard his rank as 
at all equal to their own, and they expected their 
daughter would make a better match ; but I think 
they also disliked him because they saw that the 
Princess was really fond of him. It was just in 
accordance with the character and disposition of 
the Prince and Princess Leopold that they should 
dislike the Prince for this reason. When the 
Prince came to Potsdam to see the Princess he 
found great difficulty in doing so. He was not 
asked to stay at Klein GUenicke. He stayed with 
the Prince zu Wied, and came over to Klein 
Glienicke occasionally, but was given very little 
encouragement to come there, especially by the 
Prince Leopold. When the Princess Leopold asked 
Prince Reuss to dinner, Prince Leopold refused to 
meet him, and the dinner had to be served in the 
private rooms of the Princess Margarethe. When 
the Princess Leopold was unable to be present at 
dinner, as happened on one or two occasions, the 
Princess was chaperoned by Fraulein von Strom- 
berg. I doubt if the marriage would ever have 
come off only for the fact that the Kaiser liked 

194 



Love Affairs and Dress Bills of Royalties 

Prince Reuss, and generally approved of the idea 
of the marriage between him and his niece. 

The engagement between them was announced 
in January, and they were married in May. The 
afternoon of the day the engagement was settled 
Prince Reuss and the Princess went to the Neues 
Palais to afternoon tea with the Kaiser and Kaiserin, 
and the Prince came that evening to dine at Klein 
Glienicke for the first time. Prince Leopold then 
consented to meet him at dinner. I must explain 
that on the day on which a Prussian Prince or 
Princess became engaged there is usually a dinner 
given by the parents of the bride to be, to which 
the relations of both are bidden. After dinner 
the health of the future bride and bridegroom is 
proposed by the host, and everybody tenders the 
newly engaged pair their good wishes. But the 
engagement dinner of the Prince and Princess 
Margarethe was by no means a joyous affair. 
There were no guests in addition to Prince Reuss; 
the meal was partaken of in gloomy silence, and 
at the end of the evening the poor Princess came to 
my room, as she had so often done before, in tears. 

A Prussian Princess must be married either 
from the Neues Palais or the Imperial Schloss in 
Berlin. The Kaiser desired to have a great double 
wedding at the Imperial Schloss in Berlin, by 
having the marriage of his daughter and the 
Princess Margarethe celebrated on the same day. 
But to this suggestion the Princess would not 

195 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

consent; had she been able to have her own way 
altogether she would have been married quietly, 
but the wedding had to be celebrated at the Neues 
Palais, so it was made an elaborate ceremonial. 
It took place just a fortnight before the wedding 
of the Kaiser's daughter. 

The marriage between the Prince Reuss and 
Princess Margarethe was a love match, but it is 
no harm to state that the Prince was not the 
Princess's first love. Her first love was the Grand 
Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, the most English of 
all the German Grand Dukes. The Grand Duke 
in previous days was a constant visitor to England, 
and a frequent guest of the King and Queen Mary, 
and it was a matter of common gossip in all the 
German Royal households that he desired to 
marry the Princess Mary. The story that I heard 
was that in 1912 — he was then only the Duke, for 
the late Grand Duke was still alive — he made a 
definite proposal for the hand of the Princess Mary ; 
but Queen Mary would not entertain the idea of 
the Princess, who was then only fifteen, becoming 
engaged at that age. 

But for his desire to marry the Princess Mary, 
I think it is extremely probable the Grand Duke 
would have proposed to the Princess Margarethe. 
Such at all events was her mother's opinion, and 
it was his attachment to the only daughter of the 
English reigning house that kept the Grand Duke 
a bachelor. 

196 



Love Affairs and Dress Bills of Royalties 

I was in attendance on the Princess Margarethe 
during a visit she paid to some friends when the 
Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz was among the 
guests. He was certainly more like an English- 
man than any other German royalty I came 
across. He spoke English fluently, and he had all 
his most intimate friendships in England. It was 
an unkind fate that compelled him to take up 
arms against us. 

The wedding of the Kaiser's daughter to the 
Duke of Brunswick was one of the most costly 
ceremonies ever given at the Imperial Schloss at 
Berlin. The w^edding banquet alone cost several 
thousand pounds. The fees to the officiating 
clergy ran, I am told, to £1000 each, and the Kaiser 
disbursed a very large sum of money among the 
servants and retainers w^ho assisted at the great 
function. 

The Kaiser, however, could well afford to be 
generous, for the whole expense of the wedding came 
from the State, as the custom is on the marriage 
of a Prussian royalty. Not only is the actual 
expense of the wedding of a Prussian royalty paid 
by the State, but in the case of a marriage of a 
Prussian Princess the cost of her wedding trousseau 
is defrayed out of State funds. I do not know 
how much the Princess Victoria Luise received for 
her wedding trousseau, but her cousin, the Princess 
Margarethe, had £1500, which actually more than 
covered the cost of it. 

197 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

The marriage of Prince August Wilhelm to his 
cousin the Princess Alexandra of Schleswig-Holstein 
was undoubtedly a love marriage. It took place 
shortly after I went to Potsdam. The Prince was 
then only about twenty years of age; he had 
known his cousin intimately for years, for she was 
a great favourite with the German Empress and 
a constant visitor to the Neues Palais. But I do 
not think the Princess was as great a favourite 
with her father-in-law as with the Empress. At 
any rate, after her marriage she got into trouble 
on more than one occasion with her Imperial father- 
in-law for offences against the disciplinary rules 
that the daughters-in-law of the All Highest are 
supposed religiously to observe. 

I was told that on one occasion the Princess 
August Wilhelm, who was an extremely pretty 
girl, and liked to dress smartly, saw an actress 
wearing a hat to which she took a great fancy. 
With a view to purchasing one like it, she invited 
the actress to supper, and discussed with her the 
subject of hats in general and the one she admired 
in particular, finding out where the actress had 
obtained it. 

The Princess was subsequently able to gratify 
her desire to obtain the hat she wanted. But her 
meeting with the actress got her into serious trouble 
with the Emperor. She was summoned to the 
Imperial presence, severely lectured on the im- 
propriety of a Prussian Princess asking actresses 

198 



Love Affairs and Dress Bills of Royalties 

to supper, and as a punishment was confined to 
the house for a week. 

But I heard a story of more serious trouble that 
arose between the Princess August Wilhelm and 
her father-in-law in connection with a diary that 
the Princess had kept for some years. 

Some few years after her marriage the Princess 
was staying with the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg. 
Her diary, which she had with her, was seen by 
the Duchess's dresser, who wrote to a relative in 
the Imperial household in Berlin about the diary, 
in which she had seen a reference to the Kaiser 
that greatly interested and amused her. The 
reference recorded the opinion of a lady in the 
Russian Royal household concerning the present 
appearance of the Emperor that was by no means 
flattering to His Majesty. 

The Russian lady had been staying in Berlin, 
and had met the Kaiser and Empress on several 
occasions, and had been more than once a guest 
at the Imperial Schloss. It was commonly 
rumoured that the Emperor had greatly admired 
her, and had paid her some attention. I do not 
know precisely what it was she wrote of the 
Emperor, but I was told that she referred to " the 
coarseness of his features and the objectionable 
loudness of his voice." 

Anjrsvay, word about the diary reached the 
Emperor, and the Kaiser later summoned the 
Princess August Wilhelm to his presence, and 

199 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

demanded that she should give him the book. 
The Princess at first refused to obey the Emperor's 
command, but ultimately she was compelled to 
do so. The Emperor had the book destroyed, and 
for three months the Princess was not permitted 
to see her father-in-law or to enter the Imperial 
Schloss. 

The wreath and veil form the most important 
part of a German bride's wedding dress, and in 
great families the wedding wreath and veil are 
carefully preserved among the family heirlooms. 

In this connection I was told a rather strange 
story about the wreath and veil of the German 
Empress, which the Empress lost some few years 
after her marriage. 

The Empress discovered the loss when she went 
to show them to a friend, and ascertained that 
they were not in the box where they were usually 
kept. The Kaiserin's wardrobe-room was thor- 
oughly searched, but without bringing to light the 
precious wreath and veil. 

The suspicion of having taken the wreath and 
veil might have fastened on the Empress's dresser, 
only for the fact that she had been for years with 
the Empress, and was so well known to her that 
the idea of her having taken them was out of the 
question. Indeed, the dresser was almost as much 
distressed at the loss of the articles as her Royal 
mistress. 

The Empress was in a terrible state over her 

200 



Love Affairs and Dress Bills of Royalties 

loss, and inquiries were everywhere instituted as 
to where the wreath and veil could have disappeared 
to. Ultimately, a year or so later, the missing 
articles turned up in a box in a lumber-room at 
the residence of the Grand Duke of Baden, where 
the Empress had been staying some few years 
after her marriage, and where apparently she had 
left her wreath and veil, which she carried about 
with her for some years after her marriage wherever 
she went. i 

There were two Royal weddings whilst I was at 
Potsdam after the outbreak of war. Prince Oscar, 
the son of the Kaiser, married the Countess Basse- 
vitz, a lady-in-waiting to the Empress; and 
Prince Adalbert, another son of the Emperor, 
married the Princess Adelheid of Saxe-Meiningen. 

The Kaiser, by the way, was hopeful at one 
time that the Prince Oscar would marry the 
Princess Margarethe ; but the Princess Leopold 
strongly opposed the idea of such a marriage, on 
the ground that her daughter and Prince Oscar 
were cousins. The Princess Margarethe herself, 
though she was very good friends with Prince 
Oscar and liked him, would have by no means 
welcomed the idea of marrying him, because she 
had no desire to remain a Prussian Princess all 
her life. She knew what it would mean, and 
hoped if possible to escape from all the tyranny 
that such a fate would involve by her marriage. 
Yet after her marriage with Prince Reuss she 

201 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

always signed herself Margarethe, Princess of 
Prussia. She did not wish people to forget that 
she was born a Prussian Princess, though she had 
ceased to be one according to the rules of the 
Prussian Court after she married Prince Reuss. 

I witnessed a scene during the festivities in 
Berlin the week of the marriage of the Kaiser's 
daughter which remains, and will, I think, always 
remain, very clearly in my memory. 

King George and the Queen attended morning 
service in the English Church in Berlin the Sunday 
after they had arrived at the Imperial Schloss for 
the great marriage ceremony. 

The Prince Leopold's English gardener greatly 
desired to go to the service, and the Princess 
Leopold secured him and his wife (who was also 
English) a permit to attend it from Sir Edward 
Goschen, the English Ambassador. The Princess 
gave me her own pass, and the three of us went 
to the service together. The church was densely 
packed, and at the conclusion, when their Majesties 
were leaving it, they had a very enthusiastic recep- 
tion in the street from the enormous crowds that 
had gathered to see them. 

And now when I look back upon the scene, how 
strange it seems to think that it occurred only 
just a year before the outbreak of the war, and 
that then thousands of German people were cheer- 
ing our own King and Queen as heartily and en- 
thusiastically as people would have done in London. 

202 



Love Affairs and Dress Bills of Royalties 

No member of the Imperial household can marry 
without the Kaiser's permission. The permission 
is rarely withheld, but if the Kaiser does not 
approve of the marriage he may, and sometimes 
does, put difficulties in the way of it. Of course 
it is in the power of a member of the household 
to resign his (or her) position, and then he is free 
to marry whom he pleases; but as this course 
would involve considerable loss of social position, 
a member of the Royal entourage would be re- 
luctant to adopt it in the event of the Kaiser 
objecting to his marriage. 

A few years ago a lady-in-waiting at the Neues 
Palais fell in love with and became engaged to a 
doctor who was mixed up with the Socialist move- 
ment. When this lady asked the Kaiser's consent 
to marry he strongly urged her not to make such 
a marriage, and asked her to think over the matter 
and come to him again in a couple of months' 
time. But the lady was quite resolved to marry 
the doctor, to whom she was deeply attached, and 
after a week went to the Emperor again and told 
him that it would be useless to think over the 
matter for a couple of months, for she had quite 
made up her mind to marry the man of her choice. 
She expressed the earnest hope that the Kaiser 
would allow her to do so, and that he would 
consent to receive her future husband. The Kaiser 
then told her that he would do nothing of the kind ; 
that the man she desired to marry was associated 

203 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

with a political movement of which he strongly 
disapproved, and that if she persisted in her 
intention of marrying him she would have to leave 
the Court. 

The lady then declared that she would resign 
her position at once; but this did not satisfy the 
Emperor. He told her that she might leave the 
Court, of course, if she pleased, but he declared 
that she would find that the Imperial wishes could 
not be so lightly disregarded as she appeared to 
imagine, and that if she married against the 
Emperor's desire it would be not only a bad thing 
for her, but probably even worse for her husband. 

The lady burst into tears and left the Emperor's 
presence. A month later she married. She very 
soon discovered that the Emperor had not threat- 
ened her and her husband without meaning what 
he had said. Her husband was arrested shortly 
afterwards for some speech he made at a Socialist 
meeting, and imprisoned for a month; and that 
was but the beginning of the lady's troubles : she 
found herself subjected practically to a social 
boycott. None of her old friends would know 
her, and her husband's patients would have 
nothing further to say to a man who had suffered 
imprisonment and whose wife was known to have 
incurred the Emperor's displeasure. Ultimately 
this lady and her husband had to leave Germany; 
when I last heard of them they were living some- 
where in Italy in very poor circumstances. That 

204 



Love Affairs and Dress Bills of Royalties 

was just before the war. The Princess Victoria 
Luise, I believe, endeavoured to intercede for this 
lady with her father, but to no purpose. Having 
directly defied the Emperor and having asserted 
her right to marry whom she pleased, the lady had 
to suffer the consequences. 

The most recent war wedding at the German 
Court was that of Prince Joachim to Princess 
Marie Auguste of Anhalt. That took place just 
a year after I had left Potsdam. The Princess 
Marie Auguste had the reputation of being one of 
the most smartly attired royalties in Germany ; she 
habitually wore a veil, which she had to remove 
in the presence of the Empress, a thing that 
greatly annoyed her. She was once among a 
party of half-a-dozen Royal ladies who were with 
the Empress at a concert, and on that occasion 
she ventured to wear a veil, trusting perhaps that 
the Empress would not notice it, as she was sitting 
at some distance from Her Majesty. The Empress 
at first apparently did not do so, but during an 
interval in the concert the Princess received a 
message from the Empress by a lady-in-waiting 
calling her attention to the fact that she was 
wearing a veil and asking her kindly to remove it, 
which the Princess did with a very bad grace. 

Another very smartly attired German royalty 
was the Princess August Wilhelm. Like most 
Prussian royalties, she had to defer a good deal 
to the Emperor and Empress's taste in dress, 

205 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

She greatly disliked wearing blue, which was not 
becoming to her, but when blue happened to be 
the prevailing fashionable colour at Court she had 
to conform with the wishes of her father-in-law. 
Generally speaking, however, the Princess August 
Wilhelm was most becomingly and smartly attired, 
and she was by no means extravagant. Like 
nearly all German royalties, she had a good 
dressmaker in her employ, who altered the Prin- 
cess's gowns or made up dresses for her from 
material. I believe that the Princess's dress 
bills did not exceed £500 per annum, which was 
an extremely moderate sum considering how 
well attired the Princess always was. The most 
economically dressed of German royalties was 
certainly the Princess Leopold. I do not think 
she spent more than seventy or eighty pounds a 
year on her dress; she purchased most of the 
material for her dresses in London, which she 
would get her own dressmaker to make up. Often 
she would buy the cheapest materials. I know 
that she thought two-and-sixpence quite a good 
price to pay for material. Yet in a certain way 
she contrived to look at times extremely well 
attired in quite a cheap gown. She had rather a 
fine presence and a certain stateliness and dignity, 
and I have seen her looking extremely well in a 
gown that I am sure had not cost more than two 
pounds. She had a quantity of beautiful old lace, 
with which she would have some of her gowns 

206 



Love Affairs and Dress Bills of Royalties 

trimmed. This greatly improved their effect, 
though sometimes this beautiful lace would look 
rather out of place on one of her cheap dresses. 

Her best gowns were mostly presents to her 
from her sons; they would buy her presents of 
dresses on her birthday and other occasions from 
some famous Paris modiste that cost from twenty 
to fifty pounds; without these gifts the Princess 
would never have had a really smart or costly 
gown in her wardrobe. 

As I said, she purchased nearly everything in 

London, for she had a profound contempt for 

German goods. In this connection a rather amusing 

incident once occurred. She ordered me to write 

to a shop in London with which she was in the 

habit of dealing for a dozen pairs of gloves. " I 

must have English gloves ! " she said to me. " I 

know the sort of rubbish they put in the gloves 

they make in Germany." I did as she ordered, 

and a few days later the gloves arrived, which quite 

satisfied her. She, however, cannot have examined 

them as closely as I did, for inside of them were 

printed the words, " Made in Saxony." I pointed 

this out to her a little while later, and she promptly 

sent back all the gloves she had not worn, about 

eight pairs, and insisted on getting English-made 

gloves. " One can buy that sort of rubbish in 

Germany, but I don't want it," was what she 

directed me to tell the shop from whom the gloves 

were obtained. 

207 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

The Princess, of course, went very little into 
Society, so she had not much need to be well 
dressed. She would make a couple of Court gowns 
last a year. This is a particularly difficult thing 
for a Prussian Princess to do, for by the rules of 
the Court she must not appear twice in the same 
gown at Court. The Princess, however, with the 
aid of her dressmaker, got over this little difficulty 
by making alterations in her gowns. The adroit- 
ness of her dressmaker may be judged by the fact 
that she made three dresses do the Princess for 
attendance at over nine Court functions. 

The Princess Leopold never spent long over her 
toilet. She would complete her morning toilet in 
fifteen minutes, and I have known her to get through 
her toilet when going to a Court function in a little 
over half-an-hour. 

The Princess Margarethe was rather extrava- 
gant about her dress for a Prussian Princess. I 
am sure her dress bills ran up to as much as 
£800 per annum. She was always very well 
dressed, and would never have been anything but 
becomingly attired but for her mother's inter- 
ference. She insisted, however, so far on having 
her own way as to literally obey the rule that a 
Prussian Princess must not appear twice at Court 
in the same gown. She purchased a new gown 
every time she went to any Court function. She 
bought many of her gowns in Vienna, and when 
the representatives of the Paris modistes would 

208 



Love Affairs and Dress Bills of Royalties 

come to Berlin she always gave them a good 
order. 

The Kaiser's daughter, the Princess Victoria 
Luise, dressed extremely well, but not very be- 
comingly. I was told that she obtained all her 
ideas in dress from the Society pictures in English 
illustrated periodicals, of which she made a special 
study. She would cut out the pictures of ladies 
attired in gowns that took her fancy, and would 
give the pictures to her modiste and order dresses 
to be made for her on precisely the same lines. I 
heard, by the way, a rather amusing incident that 
occurred at the time of the Princess's marriage. 
A number of English people came over to Berlin 
for the wedding, and among them was the young 
and very attractive-looking wife of a peer. This 
lady was invited to a social function at Berlin one 
afternoon at which the Kaiser's daughter was also 
present, and both she and the peeress were wear- 
ing almost precisely the same gown — a fact that 
was terribly annoying to the Princess. Every one 
noticed it, and some who knew the Princess inti- 
mately were able to guess how such a coincidence 
had occurred. What had happened, of course, 
was that the Princess had seen a picture of the 
peeress in some English paper a little while pre- 
vious to this, and had had a dress made exactly 
like the one the peeress was wearing in the photo- 
graph; the latter happened to wear this dress at 
the function in Berlin I have mentioned which 
o 209 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 



was attended by the Princess. As the Kaiser's 
daughter, the Princess Victoria Luise had to buy 
a good many of her dresses in Berhn, but all her 
smart gowns were ordered in Paris and London. 

The German Empress exercised great economy 
in the matter of her dress. She had a very good 
dressmaker in her private employ, who made most 
of her gowns. The Empress paid her, I think, 
about fifty pounds a year. She was worth at 
least ten times that sum, and so she came one 
time to think herself. She was offered a position 
in a firm of modistes in Berlin worth a good deal 
more than she was receiving with the Empress, 
and to retain her services the Empress gave her, 
I believe, a very substantial increase in her pay. 
The Empress sets aside £700 per annum for her 
dress bills; she never exceeds that sum, and it is 
probably less than the amount expended on dress 
by the consorts of most reigning European sovereigns. 

Economical as are the dress bills of German 
royalties compared, at all events, with those of, 
say, smartly dressed and fashionable American or 
English ladies, whose dress bills run into thousands, 
they are more extravagant a good deal to-day 
than they were ten or fifteen years ago. 

It was just about the time that I went to Potsdam 
that the modern extravagances in dress were first 
becoming noticeable at the German Court. The 
Empress did all she could to check them, and some 
little while later required that her ladies-in-waiting 

210 



Love Affairs and Dress Bills of Royalties 

should give her an undertaking that their dress 
bills should not exceed £300 per annum. Ten or 
twelve years ago a lady-in-waiting could dress 
quite well on £70 or £80 per annum, but now £250 
or £300 per annum is about the least sum that she 
requires to meet her dress bills in the year; and 
only for the rule the Empress made the dress bills 
of the well-to-do ladies about the Court would 
greatly exceed that figure. 



211 



. 



CHAPTER IX 

THE CROWN PRINCE AND PRINCESS 

The Marmor Palais, the summer residence of 
the Crown Prince and Princess, was, as I have 
said, quite close to Klein Glienicke, and from time 
to time I saw a good deal both of the Crown Prince 
and members of the household. 

The pride of this Royal establishment is, of course, 
the little Willy, who, on his tenth birthday, w^as 
made a colonel by his grandfather. Little Willy 
was a very small boy when I first went to Potsdam. 
I often saw him being wheeled about the Neue 
Garten in his silver-mounted pram in charge of 
his nurse. The young children playing about the 
Neue Garten would curtsey when the pram passed, 
which little Willy would acknowledge with a bright 
smile, if he were awake, or by shaking a big silver 
rattle at them. The rattle was a present to him 
from a Russian lady. 

Sometimes little Willy would attract an in- 
teresting little group of spectators about him by 
going through healthful and natural, if rather 
disturbing, lung exercises in the Neue Garten. 
His nurse would endeavour to induce him to stop 
these exercises by blowing a little silver trumpet. 
Sometimes she would hand the trumpet to little 

212 



The Crown Prince and Princess 



Willy. I once saw him holding out the trumpet to a 
little boy who was standing respectfully by, listen- 
ing with curiosity apparently to the roars of the 
child who might some day be his Emperor. The 
nurse told the boy to go away, and made an effort 
to wheel on the pram, an action that at once set 
little Willy roaring again in the lustiest fashion. 
The roars only stopped when Willy was permitted 
to bestow the silver bugle on one of the Kaiser's 
juvenile subjects. 

As little Willy grew older he would take his out- 
door exercises in the Neue Garten on foot, some- 
times clad in the uniform of the Prussian Guards, 
accompanied by a tall Guardsman, who acted as 
his attendant. Little Willy in his earlier years 
would call the Kaiser "Diggy"; later it became 
" Kazy," and finally " Kaiser " — he never called 
him grandfather. 

The Kaiser had a great liking for his little grand- 
son, though the latter would sometimes keep ques- 
tioning him until the Kaiser lost his temper. Once 
he asked the Kaiser, before a gathering of visitors 
at the Marmor Palais, if there was any other greater 
king in the world than the Kaiser, to which the 
Emperor replied that most decidedly there was not. 
The little Prince then, after a pause, asked, were 
the other kings afraid of the Kaiser, to which the 
Emperor replied, " Only the bad kings, only the bad 
kings. The bad kings are very much afraid of 



me." 



213 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

"Are you a very good king?" asked the boy 
Prince after a pause. 

" I am a very good king," was the reply. " And 
now you just run off and be a very good boy," 
and the Httle questioner was led away by his 
mother, fearful lest the Emperor might lose his 
temper. 

The little Prince was encouraged to play all sorts 
of soldiers' and war games. There were two sets 
of miniature forts about two hundred yards apart 
and opposing each other put up in the private 
garden at the Marmor Palais, and the forts were 
manned with wooden soldiers about a foot in 
height, and in the forts were air cannons from which 
little composition pellets were fired. 

The Prince would be put in command of one 
set of forts assisted by half-a-dozen old soldiers, 
and another half-dozen soldiers commanded some- 
times by the Crown Prmce, sometimes by the 
Kaiser, or by some officer, would take command 
of the other fort. 

This war game consisted in the commander of 
each fort attempting to kill all the wooden soldiers 
in the other fort first. The air cannon were 
operated by the soldiers under the direction of the 
commander. These battles were supposed to be 
between a German fort and one of some other 
nationality, usually French, but sometimes English 
or Russian. The little Prince, however, was only 
allowed to take command of the German fort. It 

214 



The Crown Prince and Princess 

was always his part to fight against the forts of 
other nationahties. 

When I heard of the game, although the little 
boy Prince found it great fun, I could not help 
thinking what an evil thing it was to bring up a 
young boy in this way, from his very infancy, to 
regard war on other nations not only as a natural 
thing, but a thing to delight in and to take a 
pleasure in. 

I know the same thought occurred to a lady in 
the entourage of the Crown Princess, when she 
watched the little Prince commanding his fort in 
these mimic battles. She ventured to express her 
opinion to the Crown Princess on the subject. 

" Just think," she said, " what the effect on the 
little Prince will be if he is always playing at killing, 
and made to take a pleasure in the idea of going 
to war with other nations — and the little Prince 
will, if he lives, one day be Emperor." 

The Crown Princess warned her friend never to 
express such sentiments before the Emperor, and 
said that in any case it was the first duty of all 
Prussian Princes to learn to be soldiers, and to know 
all about war and to be ready to fight. 

The Crown Prince was not at all as much at the 
Marmor Palais as was the Crown Princess. He 
was frequently on visits to friends, or away on 
either pleasure or military duties, which kept him 
constantly in Berlin when the Crown Princess was 
at the Marmor Palais. 

215 



t 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

The Crown Prince looks rather the sort of man 
he is. The best thing about him are his eyes — 
they are dark and full of fire. His features are 
rather sharp ; his mouth, though well cut, suggests 
weakness, and in public it pleases him usually 
to appear to be profoundly bored. Perhaps the 
worst fault in his character is his disloyalty to his 
friends. To get himself out of trouble he has on 
more than one occasion " let down " some of his 
best and most intimate friends. 

There was, for example, an officer, a Captain 
Kollener, I think his name was, who some years 
ago was one of the most intimate friends the Prince 
had. In 1911 the Prince, with Captain Kollener 
and half-a-dozen of his other friends, went for a 
week's shooting to some place in Austria. The story 
got about in Berlin that the party had been joined 
by some ladies in the theatrical profession, and 
that the Prince was having a very merry time 
indeed. The Kaiser was furious at the scandal 
that the story gave rise to, and he sent off some one 
to inquire into the truth of the matter, and to bring 
the Prince back to Berlin if necessary. 

The Prince returned to Berlin shortly after- 
wards, with the explanation that he had gone to 
Austria as the guest of Captain Kollener, who had 
rented the shooting-box, and that all the party 
present, including the theatrical ladies, were invited 
by Captain Kollener. 

To a certain extent this was literally true, but 

216 



The Crown Prince and Princess 

when the Crown Prince becomes the guest of any 
of his friends the Prince decides who shall be asked 
to meet him. The Prince was certainly responsible 
for the character of the gathering at the shooting- 
box, but he escaped getting into trouble with his 
father by putting the blame of the whole affair on 
the shoulders of his friend. The Prince satisfied 
the Emperor, because it enabled him to lay the 
chief blame of a scandalous occurrence on some 
one other than the Prince. Captain Kollener was 
severely censured and dispatched for a year to 
some remote military fort. 

It is quite a recognized thing that the honour 
of being admitted to the Prince's friendship carries 
certain risks, and of late years the Prince cannot 
boast of a large circle of intimate friends, especially 
among the class of men from among whom the 
Crown Prince would naturally choose his friends. 

Many of the Prince's most intimate friends are 
the sons of wealthy business men ; these men owe 
their commissions in crack regiments, like the 
Prussian Guards, to the influence of their Royal 
patron. 

The Prince, however, is extremely popular with 
the mass of the German people ; he is more 
popular, I think, than the German Emperor, 
which, I believe, is one of the real reasons of the 
frequent disagreements between the Emperor and 
the Prince. 

At great public functions and ceremonies the 

217 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

Kaiser, of course, has always a tremendously 
enthusiastic reception, but there seemed to me 
to be a heartier and more spontaneous character 
about the reception given to the Crown Prince. 
The Kaiser was aware of this, I know, for he spoke 
about it more than once with irritation to some 
members of his household. 

A couple of years ago the Kaiser and Crown 
Princess went to open a children's hospital. It 
was one, I think, for the children of men in the army 
and navy, and the opening of it was made a great 
function. 

On the arrival of the Kaiser there was the usual 
cheering. When the Crown Prince came on the 
scene immediately after there was more cheering, 
but just as it had died down and the Kaiser was 
about to begin his speech some man in the crowd 
shouted out, " Hurrah for our Prince ! three more 
cheers for our Prince ! " and they were given with 
the greatest enthusiasm. 

The Kaiser was furious at this; he made his 
speech and went through the opening ceremony 
with an ill grace. When he returned to the Imperial 
Schloss he roundly abused the officer who was in 
charge of the military guard at the hospital for 
permitting those second cheers for the Crown 
Prince to be given, and told him that it was an 
outrage that such a thing should have happened 
at any ceremony at which the Kaiser was present. 

When the Crown Prince was sent to Dantzig by 

218 



i 



The Crown Prince and Princess 

the Kaiser an immense crowd gathered to see him 
off at the railway station, and there were loud cries 
of " Come back soon ! come back soon 1 " from the 
crowd. The Prince, who was driving with the 
Crown Princess, stood up in his carriage on reach- 
ing the station and made a short speech, thanking 
the crowd for their good wishes, which brought 
another great outburst of cheering. The Kaiser 
and Kaiserin were to have come to the station to 
bid the Prince and Princess good-bye; but when 
the Kaiser heard of the crowd that had gathered 
to see the Prince, and of how they had cheered him, 
he would not go to the station. The Empress went 
by herself; the Kaiser afterwards sent a message, 
through a member of the household, to the Prince 
at Dantzig to say that he had not come to the 
station to see him off as he had heard that the 
Prince had elected to make his departure from 
Berlin an occasion of a popular demonstration in 
his favour — the implication in this message was 
that the demonstration given to the Prince had 
been secretly arranged at his instigation; but this 
certainly was not true. This demonstration was 
a perfectly spontaneous affair. 

It is, however, quite true that many demon- 
strations of this kind accorded to Royal personages 
in Berlin were not always quite as spontaneous as 
they appeared to be. 

I know of several occasions when deliberate 
means were taken to bring together large crowds 

219 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

in the streets to witness the Kaiser, or the Crown 
Prince, or some Royal visitor to Berlin, driving to 
a particular public function or military display. 

Herr Goltzer told me that there was an organiza- 
tion, under the control of the police in Berlin, by 
which popular demonstrations in favour of the 
Emperor and members of the Imperial family 
could be arranged without much trouble. Herr 
Goltzer said it was a very simple business to do 
this, for there is not much difficulty in gathering 
a hundred men or so to stand about together, and 
when you get a crowd of a hundred together it 
quickly grows by a natural process. 

Secretly arranged demonstrations of this sort, 
of course, could only be planned under police con- 
trol; if any one attempted to arrange a counter- 
demonstration, or one for any purpose not 
approved by the Emperor or the Government on 
the same secret line, it would be quite easily nipped 
in the bud by the police, who would not allow the 
people to stand about in the street. 

A lady of rather Socialistic sympathies, whom I 
met in Berlin after the outbreak of war, was com- 
plaining bitterly that people were always allowed 
to stand and block the street as much as they 
pleased to testify their loyalty to any member of 
the Imperial family, but great difficulties were 
put in the way of those who wished to testify in 
a like manner their devotion to any prominent 
Socialist. 

220 



The Crown Prince and Princess 

The Crown Prince, by the way, I forgot to men- 
tion, behaved very badly to another friend of his 
some years ago. 

This friend had several acquaintances in Eng- 
land, with some of whom he had stayed. He was 
commissioned by the Prince to go to England to 
gather some information that the German military 
authorities were at that time anxious to have, but 
had so far failed to secure ; the Prince particularly 
desired to be able to show that he knew how to 
get information of this sort. His friend, however, 
failed in his mission; the Prince was furious with 
him, described him as a stupid blunderer before 
several officers, and almost kicked him out of his 
presence. This happened at the Marmor Palais. 

The Crown Prince differs in several ways from 
his father. He is conspicuously lacking in know- 
ledge of business and commercial affairs, and is 
generally regarded by the heads of the great com- 
mercial and financial houses with whom he has been 
brought into contact, as a fool in business matters. 

The Crown Prince's ignorance of commercial 
affairs leads him to treat the prominent men in 
industry and finance, whom the Kaiser has been 
at pains to favour, with an insolence that has 
earned him the secret detestation of many of the 
leading men in the industrial and commercial 
world in Germany. 

A little while before the war the Prince was 
deputed by the Kaiser to meet a number of business 

221 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

men at a lunch at the Imperial Schloss in his 
absence. The Prince obeyed his father's order, and 
subsequently addressed the guests, who listened 
to him in silence. No one replied to the Royal 
address, and the guests took their departure 
immediately after it was finished. 

According to one of the guests, the Prince showed 
in his speech a profound ignorance of all business 
and commercial affairs, and none of the men 
present cared or thought it worth while to make 
any reply. 

The Crown Prince would dine a good deal at 
private houses where the Crown Princess would 
not go. He liked to meet any new celebrities — 
it might be an actor or actress, the chief figure 
in some sensational law case, or any one who had 
suddenly, no matter how, obtained great notoriety. 

There was one house in Berlin where the Prince 
went frequently for this purpose. The host was 
an impoverished baron, who had married the 
daughter of some obscure artist; but they kept 
up an extremely comfortable establishment. I 
was told that the Prince paid the baron £5000 
a year to entertain any guests that the Prince 
desired to meet. 

I heard a rather amusing story of a dinner given 
by these people to which a chemist who was said 
to have discovered something wonderful, a method 
of making diamonds or something of that sort, 
was invited to meet the Crown Prince. 

222 



The Crown Prince and Princess 

The chemist was a very fat man, and he either 
ate or drank too much at dinner; perhaps he did 
both. At any rate, after dinner, when the Prince 
endeavoured to get into conversation with him, 
he fell fast asleep in his chair, and nothing could 
waken him. The Prince left the house in a great 
rage, suggesting to his host that he should consign 
the sleeping chemist to the dust-cart when it came 
round. The Crown Prince, notwithstanding his 
ignorance of and contempt for commercial affairs, 
not only chose his chief friends from the sons of 
commercial men, but he also concerned himself in 
several commercial enterprises, not always with 
fortunate results. 

Some few years ago he financed some sort of 
theatrical enterprise. I do not know the precise 
details of this undertaking, but one of the objects 
of it, at any rate, was to buy up plays — comedies, 
musical plays, farces, etc., from new authors on 
speculation, and sell them subsequently to theatrical 
producers. The syndicate spent several thousand 
pounds in this way, in buying very wretched 
or, at all events, unsaleable theatrical pieces, and 
broke up after a couple of years' existence. The 
little venture cost the Prince about £6000; he 
had been warned by several theatrical managers 
that the venture would be extremely unlikely to 
succeed, but that did not deter him at all from 
embarking on it. 

The year before the war the Prince put £10,000 

223 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

into a hotel syndicate that stopped doing business 
on the outbreak of war. 

I was told by a lady in the Crown Princess's 
household that both the Crown Prince and Princess 
had a good deal of money in English securities, and 
that a German financier kept them both regularly 
advised about their English investments. 

The Crown Princess never visited the Princess 
Leopold, but I met her on several occasions when 
I was in attendance on the Princess Margarethe, 
who often went to the Marmor Palais or to functions 
at which the Crown Princess was present. 

The Crown Princess is extremely popular among 
every class in Germany. I think next to the 
Princess Margarethe she was the nicest German 
Royal lady I met when at Potsdam. 

The Princess's constant attendant and com- 
panion was the Countess Cecile Keyserling, who 
was one of the prettiest ladies about the German 
Court. The Countess was well off, but there were 
several ladies in the Princess's household who were 
very poor. I think the Crown Princess gave them 
appointments in her establishment to help them. 
One of her ladies-in-waiting, Fraulein von Trotha, 
married a couple of years after I w^ent to Potsdam. 

Princess Margarethe and the Crown Prince and 
Princess went to stay with her for the wedding. 
I went with the Princess Margarethe. Fraulein 
von Trotha married a man of ancient family, but 
he was as poor as his wife. The Trotha mansion 

224 





GRAFIN CECILE VON KEYSERLING 



The Crown Prince and Princess 

was a fairly big one, but most of the upstairs part 
of it was uncarpeted and very scantily furnished; 
there were very few servants, and the meals were 
of the plainest and simplest kind. 

But both the Crown Prince and Princess and 
the Princess Margarethe enjoyed themselves very 
thoroughly. There was no ceremony of any sort. 

It was a brother of Fraulein von Trotha's who 
left his duty at the front and went home in a Taube 
to see his father, v/ho was ill, for which offence he 
got into great trouble. 

The Countess Cecile Keyserling was an extremely 
pleasant, good-hearted lady, and I dare say there 
are some in England to-day who have kindly recol- 
lections of her. I know that at the outbreak of 
war, when the greater portion of the English popula- 
tion was running away from Berlin as quickly as 
possible, and when it was a case of each for himself 
or herself, the Countess helped several English 
girls to get away, and in some instances she ad- 
vanced them money and went to much trouble 
to lessen the difficulties in which some of them 
found themselves. 

The Crown Princess did not much like England; 
she had visited it two or three times incognito 
with the Prince, and once or twice without him. 
She hated the English climate, and it was one 
of her complaints that she always completely lost 
her appetite in England. 

The Crown Princess visited England incognito 
p 225 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

with the Crown Prince in the year of King Edward's 
death. 

They spent the greater part of their time looking 
at country houses to be let or sold within about a 
forty-mile radius of London. A member of their 
suite told me that the Crown Prince took back to 
Berlin a list of about thirty-two country residences 
near London, which were to be let or sold, with 
full particulars not only of these properties but 
of the surrounding district. The Prince had jotted 
down on the printed particulars opposite each 
available residence various details of the neigh- 
bourhood, of a kind not usually supplied by estate 
agents in their bills. For example, opposite one 
residence on the Prince's list were the following 
remarks : " Nearest neighbour the vicar, about 
a mile away — a rather deaf old man. Two other 
houses within three miles, one owned by a well- 
to-do shopkeeper, only used as a week-end resort, 
the other occupied by the mother of chief land- 
owner in district," and then following this cryptic 
remark, " locality quite suitable." The Prince 
may have been on the look-out for a residence in a 
quiet neighbourhood, which he might have been 
thinking of during his occasional incognito visits 
to England. Or it is just possible the residences 
were required for use by some people in the German 
Secret Service. I cannot say. I heard afterwards, 
however, that two of the residences looked at by 
the Prince were afterwards tenanted by Germans. 

226 



The Crown Prince and Princess 

The German Empress did not get on very well 
with the Crown Princess, and, except at big enter- 
tainments at the Neues Palais and the Imperial 
Schloss, they did not meet very often. Occasion- 
ally the Empress would drive over from the Neues 
Palais to the Marmor Palais to see her grand- 
children, and the Empress made a point of taking 
the Princess's children for a drive in her carriage 
about once a week; but the Crown Princess was 
not often asked to accompany her mother-in-law 
on such occasions. 

On one occasion, after little Willy had been for 
a drive with his grandmother on a cold day, he 
got a chill and was subsequently laid up with a 
bad cold, and threatened bronchitis for two or 
three weeks. 

The Princess was extremely angry with her 
mother-in-law, upon whom she laid the blame of 
the little boy's illness, and to some extent the 
Princess was justified in doing so. 

The little Prince had a thick blue reefer coat, 
which his nurse had put on him by the Princess's 
special directions; but the Empress during the 
drive ordered the coat to be taken off the boy, 
declaring that it was not cold enough for so thick 
a coat. The Empress did not know that her little 
grandson had a slight cold that day ; had she known 
she would not have taken off his coat, and his 
nurse was afraid to raise any objection. 

The Kaiser made a great fuss when he heard of 

227 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

little Willy's illness, and the cause of it. The 
Empress had to suffer in silence the effects of the 
Imperial wrath, and this did not help to improve 
her relations with the Crown Princess. After this 
occurrence the Empress and her daughter-in-law 
did not speak to each other for several weeks. 

The German Empress put as much of the work 
of attending charitable and other public functions 
as she could on the Crown Princess. Custom and 
etiquette compelled the Crown Princess to obey 
her mother-in-law, but from time to time quarrels 
arose between them in connection with this matter. 
The only way in which the Crown Princess could 
get out of attending a public function that the 
Empress did not want to attend herself was to 
feign sickness, but this ruse was not always success- 
ful. I know that on one occasion, shortly after 
I had gone to Potsdam, the German Empress went 
to see the Princess, who had declared that she was 
too ill to open a bazaar on behalf of the Empress. 
The Empress told the Princess that she did not 
believe she was ill, and that she must attend and 
open the bazaar. 

The Princess resolutely declined to do so, and 
stuck to her statement that she was too ill. The 
Empress had, therefore, to go to open the bazaar 
herself; but she had her revenge. She sent a notice 
to the papers that the Crown Princess was suffering 
from a severe attack of influenza, and was obliged 
to cancel all her engagements. By this method 

228 



The Crown Prince and Princess 

the Empress kept her daughter-in-law a prisoner 
for three weeks, and compelled her to cancel some 
engagements that she particularly desired to keep. 
The Princess was after this very careful about 
pleading illness as an excuse for not carrying out 
her mother-in-law's commands. 

The early days of the Crown Princess's life were 
in many ways less free from unhappiness and 
domestic disturbance than they are now. Quarrels 
between her and the Prince were then frequent. 
The Prince in those days would often bring home 
to the Marmor Palais some of his particularly lively 
friends, and they would all have very jolly even- 
ings of it together, drinking and singing into the 
early hours of the morning. 

The Princess greatly disliked these gatherings 
of the Prince's friends ; she never, of course, joined 
them, but she did not want these festive proceed- 
ings to be held at all at the Palace. She spoke to 
the Prince about the matter, but to no purpose. 

Now at this time the Princess had in her employ 
a rather famous character, a woman named Gmester, 
who had been the Princess's maid since her Royal 
Highness was quite a little girl. Gmester died 
shortly after I went to Potsdam. She was a most 
remarkable character, and had a considerable 
influence over the Princess, who was greatly 
attached to her. 

Gmester almost ruled the Princess's household, 
and everybody in it was afraid of her, even the 

229 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

Crown Prince. It was to Gmester that the Crown 
Princess turned for help to put a stop to these 
gatherings at the Palace, and she undertook to 
do so. She respectfully, but firmly, intimated to 
the Prince that her Royal mistress greatly disliked 
these gatherings of his friends, and asked him that 
they should be discontinued. To this request the 
Prince met with a point-blank refusal, and he 
told Gmester to mind her own business, " Unless," 
he added with a loud laugh, " you like to join our 
party yourself — we shall be delighted to see you." 

"All right, your Royal Highness," replied 
Gmester, " I shall be pleased to do so." The Prince 
laughed louder still at Fraulein Gmester's reply, 
but he did not laugh when the maid actually made 
her appearance at his next party, and after reading 
the Prince's guests a severe lecture on their rowdi- 
ness of conduct, she told them that their gatherings 
were very objectionable to the Princess; she ended 
her speech by saying that she was sure that as 
officers and gentlemen they would not continue 
to annoy the Princess again. 

The Prince was furious, but he could say nothing. 
He had asked the maid to come to the party, and 
he could not object to her having done so, nor 
prevent her speaking. The Prince's guests told 
Gmester that she was quite right, and assured her 
that they would not annoy the Princess again — 
and that was the last of the Prince's parties at the 
Marmor Palais. 

230 



The Crown Prince and Princess 

The Princess had a special little coterie of her 
own, the chief members of which were the Princess 
August Wilhelm, the Princess Margarethe and the 
Countess Bassevitz, the lady in the Imperial 
household who afterwards married Prince Oscar. 
They were all very great friends, and when the 
Prince was not at Potsdam had a very jolly time 
of it at the Marmor Palais. 

The Princess would often give a small dance after 
an afternoon tennis party, and the evening would 
end with a supper, which would sometimes be 
served on the lawn, the table being beautifully 
lighted with coloured lanterns. 



231 



CHAPTER X 

AFTER THE MARRIAGE OF PRINCESS MARGARETHE 

After the marriage of the Princess Margarethe 
I made up my mind to return to England ; but 
after I had been at home some months, at the 
urgent request of the Princess Leopold I went 
again to her in the autumn of 1913. 

I found Klein Glienicke very lonely in the 
absence of the Princess Margarethe, but I had not 
much to do and had rather more leisure than 
when the young Princess was at home. In many 
ways those months before the w^ar were the most 
interesting I had at Potsdam. I heard and saw, 
at all events, much that deeply interested me. 
I went to several Socialist meetings — I knew very 
little about the Socialist movement; I had heard 
Socialists and Socialism spoken of at Klein Glienicke 
in terms of horror. The impression that I gained 
of Socialists from the Prince and Princess Leopold 
was that they were very dangerous people, who, 
unless held in proper restraint, would break out 
in open rebellion and murder everybody who had 
any property. The Prince had an especial horror 
of Socialists. Once he came across a copy of Vor- 
warts in one of the rooms at Klein Glienicke ; he 
w^as not only furious at the sight of this Socialist 

232 



After the Marriage of Princess Margarethe 

organ, but he was absolutely frightened. How 
the paper came into Klein Glienieke I don't know. 
Probably it was left there by some messenger or 
tradesman's assistant. But the sight of it sug- 
gested to the Prince, apparently, that some terrible 
Socialist plot involving the safety of his life was 
brewing in the establishment. All the servants 
denied having had the paper, and declared that 
they had no idea how it had come into the house, 
which I am sure was perfectly true. The Prince 
refused to believe this statement, and declared that 
unless the servant who had brought the paper into 
the house confessed to having done so he would 
dismiss all the menservants en bloc. Eventually 
one of the Prince's adjutants inquired into the 
matter, and assured the Prince that none of the 
servants knew anything about how the paper 
had come into the house, and also endeavoured, 
though not with complete success, to disabuse the 
Prince's mind of the notion that there was any sort 
of plot against him going on in the establishment. 
I was rather disappointed at the first Socialist 
meeting I attended. A number of the ladies and 
gentlemen on the platform and in the body of the 
hall were in evening dress. The speeches were 
of the mildest character, and might have been made 
at a Liberal meeting in England. They were, for 
the most part, directed against the landed classes, 
and dealt largely with the evils of a land monopoly. 
Herr Goltzer, whom I have already mentioned, 

233 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

and who had been connected with the German 
Secret Service, however, promised to take me to a 
meeting where more advanced views would be 
expressed. This w^as to be held in a private house 
at Potsdam, because I was told the opinion that 
the speakers were likely to express could not be 
safely uttered in public. This sounded exciting : 
once more, so far as the outward appearance of 
the people at this meeting was concerned, I felt 
rather disappointed. The meeting was held in an 
artist's studio; there were about 150 persons 
present. They all looked quite ordinary, well- 
behaved, law-abiding people. They were well- 
dressed, some in evening dress. There was a 
sprinkling of the better type of working man, but 
for the most part the audience consisted of literary 
people, artists, men in the civil service, doctors, and 
professors. A young man played selections from 
Beethoven and Wagner divinely on the piano before 
the meeting began. The speaker was a florid, 
stout little Prussian with a very large head, a small 
mouth, and rather protruding eyes. He wore 
glasses. He spoke calmly, even when making 
what sounded to me the most astonishing state- 
ments. He said that war was certain to come soon, 
because the big capitalists in the world wanted it. 
" What the financiers want," he said, " is a really 
big European war. Something that will cost 
hundreds of thousands of millions of pounds, some- 
thing big that will last two or three years. That 

234 



After the Marriage of Princess Margarethe 

is what I believe the financiers want, and if they 
do you may be quite certain we shall have war." 
He laughed at the idea of the Socialist movement in 
Germany or anywhere else preventing war. " If 
the working classes in Germany," he said, " were 
Socialists, we would not have war; but they were 
not Socialists at all, very few of them even under- 
stand what Socialism means. Prince Biilow was, 
quite right when he said that the working class 
generally speaking, was opposed to war; but he 
was equally right when he said that when war did 
come they would be led away by their feelings of 
patriotism, and they will willingly fight any nation 
against whom they may be led, and will quite 
cheerfully, bravely and patriotically go forth to 
kill and to be killed. That is, of course," con- 
tinued the speaker, '' because we are a nation of 
silly, if well-meaning, fools, ruled by a few clever, 
unscrupulous scoundrels." 

Then he warmed to his subject and poured forth 
the most astonishingly bitter and violent flood of 
abuse on the ruling classes in Germany. Yet he 
spoke quite quietly. Much of what he said I did 
not understand, but some of the things he said 
caught, as it were, in my memory. For example, 
when speaking of the possibilities of a revolution 
in Germany, he said : "A revolution that would 
upset the monarchy and set up a republic would 
be a meaningless thing. It would mean simply 
the transfer of the power now possessed by the 

235 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

Emperor into the hands of even more dangerous 
criminals, men hke von Bohlen or Herr BaUin, 
for example. The only revolution that is worth 
thinking of, worth hoping for, that is worth the 
while of every German to struggle for, is the sort 
of revolution that will place the whole of Germany's 
economical resources in the hands of the German 
people. And, believe me, that revolution will not 
be a bloody revolution, but it only will come when 
the German people are prepared for it and are 
fitted as a nation to carry it out." 

In one part of his speech, directed especially 
against the industrial capitalists, he drew a really 
horrible picture of the crimes that they might in 
the future be capable of. He started by stating 
that there was no crime against humanity which 
the great industrial capitalists would not be capable 
of if there was profit in it. Then he suggested that 
some day some of the great German chemists might 
discover a method by which some valuable sub- 
stance, it might be an ingredient for a new and 
terrible explosive, or something that might make 
possible the production synthetically of some com- 
modity like rubber or silver. " Let us suppose," 
he said, " that this substance could be made by 
boiling down the blood and bones of newly killed 
young children." " If such a discovery is made," 
he went on, " the young children will be sacrificed 
in the boiling pot just as they are sacrificed to-day 
in our poor districts. It will be the children of the 

236 



After the Marriage of Princess Margarethc 

poor that will be sacrificed, and you will have the 
sacrifice defended in the Press and in the pulpit 
if there is enough profit in it. Can you not imagine 
how the case for such a sacrifice would be presented 
in the Press. It would be pointed out that the 
children were put to death in a painless manner; 
that many of them were destined to die young, in 
any case ; that their parents were compensated 
for their loss, and that it became, indeed, the 
patriotic duty of parents who could not provide 
properly for their children to sacrifice them for the 
welfare of their country." At another meeting 
I heard a very violent speaker declare that the 
Prussian ruling class were the most brutalized in 
Western Europe. " We are ruled by a class," he 
said, " that is devoid of almost any feeling except 
that of sheer lust for material wealth and power. 
They have striven to fill the German people with 
the same feelings, and they are leading the nation 
down to a hell where we will deservedly perish if 
we cannot rid ourselves of that doctrine of the 
devil, that the ceaseless production of wealth and 
expansion of trade must be the aim and limit of 
all our understanding and of all our endeavours." 
Herr Goltzer rather laughed at the Socialist, 
and bitterly scoffed at the idea of an industrial 
revolution in Germany. " The vast majority of 
Socialists in Germany," he said, "or of people 
calling themselves Socialists are middle-class people 
with all the prejudices and limited ideas of their 

237 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

class. They would like to see the power of the 
monarchy and the landed class upset and the 
military system abolished ; but there is not nearly 
enough energy or real force behind the Socialist 
movement to accomplish anything like that, let 
alone an industrial revolution." 

I was inspired by attending these Socialist 
meetings to read some books on the Socialist 
movement ; but I cannot say I arrived at much 
knowledge of it, and I had to be extremely careful 
not to allow any one at Klein Glienicke to see any 
of these books. The Prince certainly would have 
sent me out of the house if he thought I was 
reading such literature and going to Socialist 
meetings. Among other vague terrors that troubled 
this by no means valiant Prince was the fear of a 
revolution, and I think he saw in every working 
man a possible revolutionary. I think this fear 
was at least one of the reasons why he kept the 
windows of his room so carefully barred at night and 
the door of it locked. 

I know the Prince was a whole-hearted supporter 
of that German editor who always urged the 
flogging of strikers. Prince Leopold on such 
matters was very German ; he regarded the working 
population of Germany simply as slaves, whose 
sole duty in life was to work, and as people who had 
no rights of any sort. This is, generally speaking, 
the idea of the German aristocrat; but, as Herr 
Goltzer explained to me, the governing classes in 

238 



After the Marriage of Princess Margarethe 

Germany knew that it would be impossible to 
treat the working class openly as a slave population. 
They have to allow them at least the semblance 
of certain rights, but the military system enabled 
them to impose on the working population so severe 
a discipline that anything in the nature of an 
industrial outbreak on a large scale was almost 
impossible. Herr Goltzer told me also that there 
existed a most efficient and well-organized system 
of spying, by which the German Government kept 
themselves always well informed of all develop- 
ments in the Socialist movement and of any unrest 
and discontent among the working class. Several 
Trade Union leaders were in the pay of the Govern- 
ment, and among them men who were habitually 
uttering in public very violent sentiments. He 
told me that when some big strike of miners took 
place a few years ago the Government had every 
plan of the strikers in their possession a month 
before the strike took place, and an exact account 
of the strikers' financial resources. The Govern- 
ment could have stopped the strike, but the mine- 
ow^ners preferred that it should go on. They knew 
it could not possibly last more than three weeks 
and that the miners would then practically be at 
their mercy. Some of the men who were inciting 
the miners to strike were actually directed to do 
so by the Government. 

Some months after I had returned to Potsdam 
the Princess Margarethe, who was then living with 

239 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

her husband at Cassel, had a severe ilhiess, and at 
her urgent request I went to help to look after her. 
At one time her life was despaired of, but she 
eventually rallied, though it was several weeks 
before she completely recovered her health. 

Her mother went twice to see her, and I telephoned 
reports of her progress to Klein Glienicke every day. 
The Kaiser and Empress inquired frequently about 
the Princess, and they often sent her presents of 
fruit and flowers. There was, indeed, during 
her illness a constant stream of presents and in- 
quiries coming to the house. I learnt then for 
the first time of many cases of people whom the 
Princess had befriended and helped in one way or 
another, for those people wrote the most affec- 
tionate letters of inquiry about the Princess's 
health and referred gratefully to the manner in 
which she had helped them. I knew, of course, of 
many acts of kindness that the Princess had done, 
but there were many others that I had not heard 
of until then, and it gave the Princess the most 
intense pleasure to get letters from them— greater 
pleasure, indeed, than many of the costly gifts 
she received from other friends. 

When the Princess was recovering she fell into 
very bad spirits, and it was rather curious how 
much she desired to see her home again that must 
have been full of the unhappiest recollections for 
her. 

Her house at Cassel was a comparatively small 

240 



After the Marriage of Princess Margarethe 

house; there were no gardens, and the Princess 
dearly loved her gardens at home. She longed to 
see them again, which was, perhaps, a natural wish ; 
but I think she also greatly desired to try once 
more to make friends with her mother, and to be 
at home with her again. This was not in the least 
because she was unhappy at Cassel. She dearly 
loved her husband and was perfectly happy with 
him, but, poor lady, she greatly longed for a 
mother's love; she had never known what such a 
thing was, and I knew how hardly she had striven 
to gain it. 

What she wanted her mother to do was to ask 
her and her husband to Klein Glienicke, but what 
she feared was that her mother would ask her but 
not her husband, and she would not go without 
him. Once she said to me, " I would think this 
illness had been a great blessing if mother would 
make real friends with us both." 

The invitation to Klein Glienicke did come, and 
the Princess and her husband were both invited. 
The Princess went home in great spirits; her 
father and mother received her kindly, and there 
was a sort of reconciliation. At all events, while 
she and the Prince were at Klein Glienicke there 
were no quarrels to speak of. The Princess's illness 
undoubtedly affected her mother. I think she felt, 
though she would never admit it, that she had not 
treated her daughter well. There were moments, 
I think, when she wished to be really reconciled to 
Q 241 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

the Princess, and very few words would have 
enabled her to be so. But there was something 
in the Princess Leopold's nature, it may have been 
her pride or a latent jealousy that she could not 
overcome, that would not let her tell her child 
that she loved her. The Princess stayed some 
weeks at home, and then went back to Cassel. 
The next time I saw he'r was after the outbreak of 
war. 

I have said very little about the Leopold Princes, 
but they were good friends to me, and I have the 
kindest remembrances of them. 

The Princess Leopold was devoted to her sons; 
indeed, her devotion and selflessness, where her 
sons were concerned, were strange things in this 
Princess who never exhibited any sign of such 
qualities in her relationship with her only daughter. 
The Princess Leopold was ceaseless in her devotion 
to her youngest son. Prince Frederick Leopold, 
who was delicate. The doctor ordered him chicken 
broth. Irma, the cook at Klein Glienicke, great as 
was her skill as a cook, could not make the broth 
properly; I volunteered then to make it, rather 
in fear and trembling, for I knew that I ran the 
risk by doing so of incurring Irma's wrath. Any- 
way, the broth I made greatly pleased the young 
Prince, and I made it for him regularly every day 
afterwards for some time. His mother was most 
grateful to me, and I think always remembered my 
effort in this direction with kind feelings, though 

242 



After the Marriage of Princess Margarethe 

she was not the sort of person ever to express 
gratitude very effusively to any one. 

Prince Leopold had no more affection for his 
boys than he had for his daughter, and never ex- 
pressed the least interest in what they were doing. 
When they entered the army and went to Dantzig, 
it was the Princess who attended to the purchase 
of their uniform and all other matters that had to 
be settled before they left home; their father 
simply entered into the necessary arrangements 
to provide his sons with money; he did this on 
the lowest possible scale, and made it understood 
that they should not expect any more from him. 
Indeed, so mean was he in this respect that the 
Princess Leopold, out of her own small income, 
frequently sent them money, denying herself many 
things she wanted in order to be able to do so. 
Later, the Prince was compelled to make more 
ample allowances to the Princes, and it w^as then that 
they began giving presents of dresses to their mother. 

All Prussian Princes must be taught a trade. 
Prince Frederick Siegesmund and his brother 
Frederick Karl were taught carpentry; they went 
through a year's course of instruction. Prince 
Frederick Leopold, the youngest, was an artist. 
Prince Frederick Siegesmund had a considerable 
mechanical bent, and a couple of years before the 
war when he was home on leave he turned his 
special attention to the making of aeroplanes. He 
had a workshop of his own, and a couple of first- 

243 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

rate assistants and a clever mechanic. Between 
them they constructed an aeroplane, on which 
the Prince made several flights ; but this was done 
under difficulties, for he was strictly forbidden by 
both his parents to fly. 

When the war broke out, the Prince desired very 
strongly to enter the Army Flying Corps, but his 
father objected. I believe the Prince Siegesmund 
then appealed to the Kaiser, but he would not 
interfere in the matter. Curiously enough, the 
aeroplane that the Prince made was one of the 
earliest to be lost in the war. The Prince gave it 
to the Flying Corps, and a couple of months later 
it was shot down on the French front : the pilot 
was killed, but the observer escaped with some 
slight injuries. The machine fell within the German 
lines. A very horrible story was related to me 
about an incident that occurred when the Leopold 
Princes were quite young boys. It was told to me 
by a lady who was at Klein Glienicke at the time 
it happened. 

As I said Prince Leopold took very little interest 
in the upbringing or education of his sons, but 
once he undertook personally to give them an 
exhibition of a most horrible and revolting kind 
to accustom them to the sight of blood, as he said. 
He summoned the three boys into his study one 
morning. What the boys saw when they entered 
it was a table in the centre of the room covered 
with a white cloth. On the cloth was a large china 

244 



After the Marriage of Princess Margarethe 

dish, and by the dish was a carving-knife. Stand- 
ing by the table was a manservant holding a live 
rabbit in his arms. The boys were ordered to 
take their places by the table in front of their 
father, who ordered the servant holding the rabbit 
to cut the animal's throat before the boys, letting 
the blood run into the dish. Prince Frederick 
Leopold, the youngest boy, who could not have 
been more than about nine years old, and who was 
highly nervous and sensitive, fainted; his two 
brothers regarded their father with horror, but 
neither of them said a word. Prince Leopold 
laughed when his youngest boy fainted, and told 
his brothers to carry him out into the air, saying 
that he was glad the other two could see a little 
blood-letting without being upset. 

That was the first and last lesson of such a kind ; 
the young princes so strongly objected to it that 
I do not think they would have submitted to having 
another. They never spoke of this incident to me, 
but I know they did to others and that they remem- 
bered it with horror. It may be that it was by 
such methods that the German idea of frightfulness 
was implanted in the minds of young children ; but 
I can certainly say that this effort on the part of 
the Prince Leopold to brutalize his children and 
to instil into them feelings of callousness and 
indifference to sights of cruelty was a failure. A 
great delight to the young Leopolds latterly when 
they were at home was to travel in the Zeppelin 

245 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

that flew every day regularly between Berlin and 
Potsdam. It was an enormous airship, some 
500 feet long, and in its journey passed right over 
Klein Glienicke. Prince Leopold, who had the 
courage to witness a live rabbit's throat being cut, 
had not sufficient daring to risk his life in travelling 
in the Zeppelin, and absolutely refused to do so. 

As I said, all Prussian Princes are taught a trade, 
and in this connection I heard a rather amusing 
anecdote about the Crown Prince from the old 
man whose son was instructing the Leopold Princes 
in carpentry work. This old man had been the 
Crown Prince's instructor in carpentry when he 
was a boy. The Prince was a difficult pupil; he 
intensely disliked the work he had been set to 
learn, and did what he was told to do by his in- 
structor always with a bad grace, and was con- 
tinually grumbling at having to spend so many 
hours in a workshop. 

One morning the Emperor came into the work- 
shop to see the Prince, and, after watching him for 
some little time working a lathe, said to his in- 
structor as the two walked towards the door, 
" Well now, what do you think of the Prince's 
work?" The old man hesitated, and then being 
bidden by the Emperor to speak up and say 
exactly what he thought about the Prince and 
his work, replied, " I think, your Majesty, that it 
is very lucky for His Royal Highness that he is 
His Royal Highness." 

246 



I 



After the Marriage of Princess Margarethe 

" What do you mean ? " asked the Kaiser. 

" I mean, your Majesty," replied the old man, 
speaking very deliberately, " that if His Royal 
Highness had been an apprentice of mine in the 
ordinary way I would have cracked his head with 
this stick long ago." The old carpenter carried a 
heavy wooden stick, and shook it as he spoke. 
The Emperor was not in the least annoyed. He 
laughed heartily, and declared that a rap or two 
over the head was no more harm for a Prince than 
for anybody else; but the old carpenter never 
dared, of course, to strike the heir to the German 
throne. Had he done so he probably would have 
found that though a rap on the head was no worse 
for a Prince than for an ordinary apprentice, it 
was not at all a good thing for the person who 
administered the rap. 

The Leopold Princes were on very good terms 
with the Kaiser's sons, more especially with Prince 
Adalbert, who was very often at Klein Glienicke 
with them. This was after the Princes had entered 
the army. They then were given a house of their 
own on the Glienicke estate, where they could see 
their own friends and do pretty much as they liked 
when they were home on leave. Of course, when 
the Princes were living with their parents they 
could never ask any one to the house without their 
parents' consent, and it was on very rare occasions 
that they were allowed to ask their friends to see 
them. 

247 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

The Kaiser's sons, in any case, were not very 
welcome at Klein Glienicke. Prince Leopold stood 
in too great fear of the Emperor to risk offending 
him by any direct act of discourtesy. What he 
would have liked to have done, I am sure, would 
have been to have forbidden his house to the 
Kaiser's family; but that would have been going 
farther towards an open breach with the Emperor 
than Prince Leopold cared to venture. He con- 
tented himself with simply finding an excuse to 
refuse permission to his sons to have guests on 
nearly every occasion when they sought it. 

Prince Leopold got into considerable trouble 
with the Emperor in connection with a mission on 
which the Emperor sent him to the King of Bulgaria. 
This happened about three years before the war. 
I was never able to find out exactly what was the 
cause of the trouble; the Prince was ordered by 
the Kaiser at very short notice to go to Bulgaria 
on some sort of secret mission. The Prince was 
summoned to the Imperial Schloss at Berlin early 
in the morning and returned a couple of hours 
later. That evening he left for Sofia, and three 
days later came back to Klein Glienicke. The 
Prince went to the Neues Palais the day after his 
return, and remained there about an hour; when 
he returned to Klein Glienicke he went at once to 
his private rooms and did not make his appearance 
for two days. The Prince evidently had had a 
disturbing interview with the Emperor, but beyond 

248 



After the Marriage of Princess Margarethe 

that he had been to Sofia on a very hurried mission, 
nothing more was apparently known to any one 
at Klein Glienieke. Later I heard that the Kaiser 
was furious with the Prince over something he had 
done when at Sofia. A member of the Kaiser's 
household told me that the reason of the Kaiser's 
wrath was that Prince Leopold had offended King 
Ferdinand by declining to stay at the Palace, 
although every preparation had been made for his 
reception. The Prince stayed at an hotel and 
would not even dine with the Bulgarian monarch, 
because, I suppose, he was afraid that the food might 
not agree with him. At his hotel he could order 
what he pleased, and have the cooking of his 
dinner superintended by one of his own servants. 
Whether this was the real cause of the offence 
that Prince Leopold gave to King Ferdinand I 
cannot say, but there is no doubt that the Prince 
in some way deeply offended the Bulgarian monarch, 
and Prince Leopold, instead of remaining at Sofia 
for a week, returned to Berlin in three days. 

The relations between the Kaiser and Prince 
Leopold after this incident were very bad. The 
Prince that year was instructed that he would not 
be called upon to attend the military manoeuvres, 
but a few days before they were to begin he was 
requested by the Kaiser to attend ; he was, however, 
compelled to take a lower command than that 
which he held or had held at previous manoeuvres. 

In those later days I spent at Potsdam I often 

249 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

felt disposed to resign my position at Klein 
Glienicke. I had made many friends among both 
Enghsh and Germans in Berhn, and had several 
opportunities of going into business on most 
favourable terms on account of my connection with 
the Princess Leopold's household. 

I had, for example, an offer from one of the 
leading firms of modistes to enter their business 
on a salary and commission basis. I very nearly 
accepted this offer; it would, had I done so, have 
placed me immediately in the receipt of a fairly 
good income, with certain prospects of a better one, 
and an ultimate partnership in the firm. 

And yet I could not make up my mind to take 
it. I knew it meant settling down for my life in 
Germany, and although there were many of my 
English friends who had done so, I could not 
decide to follow their example. I was in a state 
then of much doubt and unrest. On some days 
I would quite make up my mind to leave the 
Princess and return to England ; then would come 
over me a great and almost irresistible desire 
to see my home again. Once I w^ent so far as to 
tell the Princess of my intention to go back to 
England; she told me to go home for a holiday if 
I wished, but said I must promise to return to her 
again. Had she raised any objection to my going 
I think I would have left her at once, but when she 
so readily offered to let me go I felt that, after all, I 
could go at any time; so I remained on at Klein 

250 



After the Marriage of Princess Margarethe 

Glienicke unsettled and restless. Looking back 
upon those days I think the shadow of coming 
events must have been on me. One evening I 
went to Berlin to see some English friends of mine. 
It was a lovely summer night, at the end of June. 
We were sitting in the garden enjoying the cool 
air in the fall of the evening. I felt particularly 
restless and depressed that night, and I do not 
often suffer from depression. One of my friends 
remarked that I did not appear to be in good spirits. 
I said that I felt depressed, but that I did not 
know why. 

I then told them about the offer I had received 
from the firm of modistes, and said that I could 
not make up my mind to take it. " I don't know 
how it is," I declared with a laugh, " but I have 
been feeling lately in the sort of mood that I can- 
not make up my mind to do anything. I almost 
decided to go back to England the other day, but 
I feel somehow that the next time I do go back to 
England I won't return to Germany again." 

My hostess then laughingly declared that I had 
infected her with my depressed mood, and that she 
felt perfectly certain that some fearful disaster 
was imminent. " I feel that Berlin will probably 
be wrecked to-night by an earthquake," she said; 
'' or that Jack (that was her husband) will break his 
meerschaum pipe. There is only one thing to be 
done, let us all go out and have supper somewhere 
and make a night of it." 

251 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

So we did. We went to the Esplanade for supper. 
I began to think my friends were right ; the Hghts, 
the music, the chatter of the people all about us 
soon put my depressed mood to flight. We were 
all enjoying ourselves and laughing and chatting 
away in the best of spirits, when we were joined by 
another friend. " By the way," he said as he sat 
down, " the Archduke Ferdinand and his wife 
have been murdered." Then he gave us the details 
of the affair, which had just come in. The news 
had quickly spread and everybody was talking 
about it. Our party broke up about an hour later, 
and as I got into a taxi to go to the railway station, 
my friend, when bidding me good-night, said half- 
jokingly, " I told you I felt there was going to be 
a disaster, but now we know the worst, thank 
goodness." 

But we did not. We had no idea at all of how 
the news we heard that evening was destined so 
deeply to affect every person at our party. 

A queer thing happened that night when I got 
back to Klein Glienicke. At ten o'clock the two 
night sentries came on duty at the entrance to 
Klein Glienicke until six o'clock in the morning. 
When I was out after ten o'clock I was always 
challenged and stopped by the sentries. I was 
never detained, however, for more than a couple 
of minutes, because the Klein Glienicke watchman 
was also on duty. He had to patrol a beat of 
about 300 yards round the house, and directly 

252 



After the Marriage of Princess Margarethe 

he appeared and identified me as a member of 
the estabhshment I was allowed to pass by the 
sentries. The sentries did not know me; they 
were sent from the barracks, and different men 
came every night. On this particular night, how- 
ever, the watchman at Klein Glienicke did not 
immediately appear. He had gone into the house, 
as a matter of fact, to get his tobacco and pipe with 
which he consoled himself during his night vigils, 
and which he had forgotten to bring with him. 
I had to stand between the two sentries ; they stood 
very erect, their rifles shouldered. I had to stay 
there, the captive of these two motionless Hun 
soldiers, for nigh a quarter of an hour. Then at 
last the watchman arrived and I was liberated. 



253 



CHAPTER XI 

THE DAYS BEFORE THE WAR 

From the moment of the Sarajevo assassination 
the immediate topic of conversation both at Klein 
Ghenicke and at the Neues Palais became, would 
the tragedy lead to war ? The Kaiser was at Kiel, 
I think, when the tragedy occurred ; but he returned 
at once to Berlin and summoned von Jagow and 
von Bethmann-Hollweg to the Imperial Schloss, 
where he had a conference with them that lasted 
over three hours. The next day there was a meet- 
ing at the Palace of the chief members of the Army 
Administrative, after which the Kaiser immediately 
left Berlin. No one knew where the Emperor 
went to, but I heard later that he had gone to Essen 
and spent two days in close conference with von 
Bohlen and the heads of the Krupp firm; after 
that he returned to the Neues Palais. The day of his 
return Prince Leopold was summoned to see the 
Emperor — an officer at Klein Glienicke told me 
that the Kaiser had sent for the Prince to tell him 
that he would have to cancel any arrangements 
he might have made for leaving Germany during 
the next three months; no Prussian Prince, the 
Kaiser said, would be allowed for the present to go 
out of Germany. Also this officer told me that a 

254 



The Days before the War 



very large number of officers on leave had been 
warned to hold themselves in readiness for active 
service, and all further leave was cancelled. 

Speaking of the tragedy at Sarajevo the Kaiser 
said to Prince Leopold that it was impossible to 
foresee the events it might lead to, and that until 
the trouble it was bound to cause was settled, 
every German must hold his hand to his sword. 

No one at Klein Glienicke, least of all myself, 
had any idea (I do not think that even Prince 
Leopold had) that a great European war was 
imminent. If Prince Leopold had any idea of the 
sort, I am certain he would have been much more 
disturbed than he was ; and I am certain the Princess 
Leopold had not either, otherwise she would have 
gone off to see her sons at once. But what every- 
body at Klein Glienicke seemed to feel was that 
there was a prospect of war, in which Germany might 
somehow become involved. 

We heard all sorts of rumours from the Neues 
Palais. We heard that the Crown Prince had been 
suddenly summoned by the Kaiser and dispatched 
on a mission of some sort to East Prussia. Then 
we heard of midnight visits to the Emperor from 
mysterious personages, and of the ceaseless arrivals 
of telegrams and special messengers throughout 
the day and night. But neither in the Press nor 
outside the Royal entourage did I hear any talk 
of war except from Herr Goltzer. He told me he 
felt quite certain that there would be a European 

255 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

war, but even he did not believe there would be 
war between England and Germany. He to'.d me 
that the Kaiser was convinced that England would 
not come in, in the event of a war between the 
Central Empires and Russia and France. " There 
are influences at work in England," said Herr 
Goltzer, '* which the Kaiser rightly or wrongly 
believes will be sufficiently strong to keep England 
out of the war; but war is almost certain." Herr 
Gk)ltzer told me much about Germany's preparations 
for war. He said that since 1905 the Government 
had been accumulating secretly most enormous 
stores of food. 

Herr Goltzer said that throughout Germany at 
different military centres big imderground stores 
had been made, and that these were then practically 
filled with preserved food of different kinds. He 
said that there was enough food in these stores to 
keep eight millions of men supplied with most of 
the necessities of life for at least two years. Herr 
Goltzer told me, also, of an extraordinary institution 
for teaching men in the Emperor's service the 
art of stirring up sedition and rebellion and giving 
trouble to foreign Governments generally. He 
added, and I can readily beheve it, that it was the 
only sort of institution of its kind in the world. 

The students in this institution were all ex-army 
officers, and were most carefully selected by the 
Emperor himself. Lectures were given to the 
students at a room in a barracks. I had a leaflet 

256 



The Days before the War 



that was circulated among the students, which I 
obtained from Herr Goltzer, but it was taken from 
me after the outbreak of war, when my papers and 
letters were examined. 

The leaflet set out the general principles in which 
these students were instructed. It stated, I re- 
member, that in every State and country there 
were men of some importance who were discon- 
tented with the Government, and that wherever 
it was found desirable to stir up trouble, it could 
often best be done by encouraging such men to 
upset the Government. Where it was impossible 
to do this, it was pointed out that, at all events, such 
active discontent might be created as to give cause 
for great trouble to the Government of the country. 
Various other ways were given by which trouble 
might be caused in different countries. 

I can give at least one remarkable example of 
how these professional disturbers of the peace 
carried on their work, though I only learnt about 
it after the outbreak of war. In the April of 1913 
some German officers, who were on a holiday at 
Nancy, were coming out of a music-hall one night, 
when a quarrel arose between them and some of 
the audience. 

The German officers, according to the German 
papers, were grossly insulted and subjected to very 
violent treatment by a number of French students 
and other members of the audience. According to 
the French papers, the Gernian officers had been 
R 257 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

subjected to nothing more than a little hustling, 
on account of a dispute that had arisen between one 
who was not quite sober and a French student. 
But the German papers made a tremendous fuss 
about the affair. The Lokal-Anzeiger and the 
sedate Kreuz Zeitung had immense headlines about 
the incident. 

It was stated that the occurrence was a deliberate 
insult to the Emperor and the German Army, and 
that an official apology must be demanded from 
the French Government. Baron von Schoen, the 
German Ambassador in Paris, was instructed by 
von Jagow to obtain a full account of the al"air. 
Von Schoen's report was very considerably altered 
in Berlin, so I heard, before being published. To 
judge from the published report, one would cer- 
tainly think that the German officers had been 
most wantonly and deliberately attacked and 
insulted by the greater part of the audience. 

I remember this incident very well, because this 
was the first occasion on which I heard war be- 
tween Germany and France talked about as an 
immediate possibility. 

Even the calm and phlegmatic Prince Leopold 
said he feared the incident would lead to war. 
" The insult to our officers was deliberate," he said, 
" and there must be reparation and an apology." 

In Berlin the incident was the chief topic of 
conversation, and large meetings were held to 
insist on an apology being demanded from Paris. 

258 



The Days before the War 

Then, suddenly, the excitement died down. It 
was announced that a satisfactory explanation had 
been obtained of the affair from the French Govern- 
ment, and in a few weeks people had ceased to talk 
about the occurrence, which once looked as if it 
would result in war. 

The really amazing part of the whole business, 
however, was that it was deliberately caused by the 
Emperor's trained peace-disturbers. The insulted 
German officers were all students at the school I 
have mentioned, and had been instructed to go 
to Nancy to do what they did. The affair was 
worked up in Berlin by the Emperor's agents in 
order to test the war spirit of the country, and 
discover how the sudden prospect of a war with 
France would be received. The Kaiser and his 
advisers were apparently satisfied with the results 
of the test. How secretly and rapidly the whole 
business was done may be gauged by the fact that 
even the Prince and Princess Leopold had no idea 
of the real circumstances of the affair, though they 
learnt about them afterwards. 

But careful and elaborate as Germany's prepara- 
tions for war had been for years, there can be no 
doubt that they were made with considerable 
secrecy. I have not the least doubt that to the mass 
of the German people Germany's well-preparedness 
for a great war came as a surprise. An officer at 
Klein Glienicke told me that a great European 
war would not possibly last for more than a year, 

259 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

because no nation could keep up the immense output 
of shells that would be required by the combatants 
in modern warfare. " Germany," he said, " is 
probably better prepared for war in this respect 
than any other nation, but if we cannot win the 
war in a year, fighting will be almost brought 
to a standstill for want of shells." Yet, after 
the outbreak of war, some officer told the Princess 
Leopold that there were millions of shells stored 
in different parts of Germany, and that long 
ere this supply of ammunition was exhausted 
double the quantity would have been made, and 
that so far as the supply of shells went Germany 
could practically see three years ahead. 

In the second week of July Prince Leopold of 
Bavaria (not Prince Leopold of Prussia) paid a 
private visit to the Kaiser at the Neues Palais ; the 
Prince came incognito. I heard much about him 
from a member of the Imperial entourage. The 
Prince had a great appetite, and drank red wine 
copiously and smoked strong cigars incessantly, 
and sat up half the night playing poker with some 
officers in the Prussian Guard, or with any members 
of the Imperial entourage who were ready to gamble 
heavily. Gambling was not allowed at the Neues 
Palais, but the rule apparently had to be suspended 
during the three days the Prince stayed there : he 
left the Palace about £500 poorer than when he 
arrived, but took his losses cheerfully. He was not 
in the least the sort of guest the Kaiser desired. 

260 



< 



The Days before the War 



For one thing, he was not apparently ahve to the 
necessity of treating the All Highest with the 
respect and deference that even greater Princes 
than Leopold of Bavaria accorded to the Emperor. 
The Prince, in the exuberance of good spirits in- 
duced by his deep draughts of Rhenish wine, joked 
with the Emperor in a manner that placed the All 
Highest in a rather ludicrous position before his 
entourage, and there was nothing that roused the 
ire of the Empeior so much as the fact that he was 
being laughed at. 

One night at dinner the Prince suddenly burst 
out laughing without any apparent reason. The 
Kaiser looked at him severely, whereupon the 
Prince at once apologised, saying, " I have seen the 
point of that jest your Majesty told me this morning 
and I could not help laughing." As every one knew 
that the points of the Kaiser's jests were often 
somewhat deeply hidden, they had some difficulty 
in refraining from laughter at the Prince's explan- 
ation of his fit of mirth. 

The Kaiser was furious, and through the rest of 
the meal preserved a silence and frown that had a 
subduing effect on the Bavarian Prince. 

Prince Leopold had a very poor opinion of the 
Kaiser as a general, and a rather high one of himself. 
The last night of his visit the Prince proposed 
the health of his host. He did not make a speech ; 
he simply stood up and said, " I have the honour 
to propose the health of your Majesty, and may God 

261 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

confound all your enemies." Then sitting down he 
said to an elderly officer sitting next to him, " For 
His Majesty will never be able to do so himself." 
The officer knew the Prince's opinion of the Kaiser's 
generalship, with which he rather agreed, and he 
smiled. The Prince had come on serious business 
to the Neues Palais, and no doubt he kept serious 
during the conferences he had with the Emperor 
and with members of the Army Administrative; 
but there is equally little doubt that the Emperor 
was glad to see his guest depart. 

When leaving the Neues Palais the Prince took 
occasion to indulge in a parting jest at the expense 
of a member of the Imperial entourage. This 
officer had recently found favour in the Kaiser's 
eyes. His special ambition had been to secure a 
position in the Imperial household, and being 
extremely well off and a rather clever courtier he 
managed to get his ambition gratified. He was a 
captain of a Dragoon regiment, and when ap- 
pointed to a position in the Royal entourage was 
promoted to be a colonel. This happened just 
before the arrival of the Bavarian Prince, who 
apparently learned all the reasons of the officer's 
promotion whilst he was at the Neues Palais. As 
the Prince was taking his leave of the Kaiser and 
members of the household, he shook hands with 
the rapidly promoted colonel and said, *' Good-bye, 
General ! " 

The officer was very angry, but the jest was 

262 



The Days before the War 



rather of the kind that appealed to the Emperor, 
and he laughed quite heartily — indeed, the Kaiser 
always had a laugh ready for a jest at any one's 
expense but his own. 

I heard some reports of the Bavarian Prince's 
opinion on war. He thought that the Kaiser and 
his military advisers placed too much reliance on 
the machinery of warfare. He told an officer at 
the Neues Palais that big guns and high explosives 
would not be the determining factor in the next 
big war. " Even if we were the only nation pos- 
sessing big guns and high explosives, I do not believe 
that they alone would give us victory," said the 
Prince ; " but, of course, other nations will also have 
big guns and high explosives and every engine of 
warfare that we have. We may have better guns 
and machines and more of them, but that advan- 
tage will not suffice to give us victory." 

The Prince believed more in superior generalship 
and in the skilful handling of men than in any ad- 
vantage which might accrue from a superior number 
of guns and various machines of war. " Unless we 
achieve immediate victory," he said, " the enemy 
will be able, sooner or later, to equalize our advantage 
in guns; but if we have better generals he will not 
be able to do so, at all events, not at all so readily." 
At one of the Kaiser's military councils he said, 
" We might conceivably blunder into defeat no 
matter how great our advantage was in guns, but 
I am certain we shall never blunder into victory 

263 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

in the next European war. We shall win it only 
because our troops are the best led." 

The Prince, I was told, had a great contempt for 
Germany's elaborate secret service system. " Con- 
fined within narrow^er limits," said the Prince, 
" the secret service would be more effective. We 
have some first-rate men in it ; but we have a whole 
crowd of fools and rogues, and they can be relied 
on to do nothing but mislead us." 

The Kaiser, though he disliked Prince Leopold 
of Bavaria, entertained rather a high opinion of his 
abilities as a commander. I heard that he rated 
von Kluck, von Hindenburg and Prince Leopold 
of Bavaria as the three greatest generals in 
Germany, presumably after himself. 

A curious incident happened just after the de- 
parture of Prince Leopold. I met some one in the 
Imperial Household in Berlin one morning, and 
we travelled back to Potsdam together. She told 
me that a most mysterious visitor had arrived at 
the Neues Palais, a lady closely veiled. " I do not 
know who she is," said the dresser; " she has been 
given a suite of apartments to herself, and is only 
attended by her own maid, and no others are to be 
allowed in her rooms. She had a long conversation 
with the Kaiser and Empress after her arrival, and 
is to depart early to-morrow." 

I was not especially interested in this mysterious 
visitor until the girl informed me that she believed 
she had just arrived from England, and was to go 

264 



The Days before the War 



back there on the following day. I have often 
since wondered who that mysterious, closely veiled 
lady could have been. 

Almost immediately after this the Court left 
the Neues Palais. The Empress went on a country- 
house visit, and the Emperor went to Berlin and 
afterwards to Kiel, I think, but I am not certain. 
Then came for a short while a calm. Little of the 
diplomatic correspondence that was taking place 
between Berlin, London, Paris, St. Petersburg and 
Vienna got into the papers. At Klein Glienicke 
the impression, gained ground that there would 
be no war. Whatever had happened to create 
this impression, it seemed at all events to be a 
genuine one. The Princess Leopold, indeed, began 
making her usual arrangements for her visit to 
England in August. I heard that the Kaiser had 
settled that he would go to the Cowes Regatta. 

I took advantaofe of the absence of the Court to 
go to the Neues Palais one afternoon to see some of 
the newly arranged rooms. 

I had seen the chief reception state apartments 
at the Neues Palais before, but on this occasion I 
was shown the Kaiser's personal apartments, which 
I had never seen before, and I was rather interested 
in them. The Kaiser's personal writing-room was 
a fairly spacious apartment overlooking a wide 
stretch of park. In the centre of the room was 
a massive writing-table with heavy ormolu legs. 
There was a comfortable writing-chair at the table, 

265 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

and on either side of the chair were two small 
tables ; on one was a pile of documents, and on the 
other was a square box about a foot in height. 
There was a slit in the top of this box. The 
Kaiser put all his private letters into this box after 
receiving them; he would mark on each letter the 
nature of the reply to be sent; if he desired to 
write the reply himself he would simply write a 
" W " on the letter. The box was given every 
morning to the Emperor's private secretary, who 
had a key to it; the secretary would write the 
replies to the letters except those marked " W," and 
would either sign them himself or give them to the 
Emperor to sign, according to the instructions marked 
on the letter. All the letters dealt with were then 
filed and locked up in a safe. The walls of the 
writing-room were covered with a miscellaneous 
collection of pictures. There were some oil-paint- 
ings of Bismarck, Admiral von Tirpitz, Prince 
Billow and Prince Furstenburg. A large square 
table was covered with photographs, many of 
which I recognized, some of Queen Victoria, King 
Edward, Queen Alexandra, and King George and 
Queen Mary, also of the Queen of Spain and the 
Czar. On a mahogany stand near the window was 
a perfectly made model in gold of a warship. It 
bore the name Hohenzollern on its side in jewelled 
letters. The model was about four feet in length. 
This was a present from an enormously wealthy 
man, a merchant and banker who ruined himself 

266 



The Days before the War 



in his desire to cultivate the friendship of his 
Emperor. I was told that this man, Herr Reifner 
I think was his name, and he was afterwards 
created a Baron, met the Emperor many years 
ago at a dinner given by a number of merchants 
and bankers to the Kaiser some few years after 
his accession. 

Baron Reifner subsequently became a guest of 
the Emperor, and was admitted to some degree 
of intimacy with him : to gain this distinction 
the man, who had made a very large fortune in 
business, was quite ready to ruin himself. He 
entertained the Emperor to the most magnificent 
banquets ; was the means of getting several of the 
Emperor's friends and relations out of financial 
difficulties ; ultimately, at the Emperor's suggestion, 
he financed some undertaking which turned out 
disastrously, and the Emperor ceased to have any- 
thing to say to him, and spoke of him as one of the 
biggest idiots he had ever met, as no doubt he was. 
The gold model of the warship that the Baron gave 
to the Emperor cost, I believe, £7000. 

There were several busts about the room : one 
of Martin Luther occupied a position in a corner, and 
near it was a large bronze bust of Prince Frederick 
Charles, the Red Prince and father of Prince Leo- 
pold. There was another of the Emperor himself, 
and a smaller one of his grandfather. There were 
several paintings of ladies among the pictures. 
There w^as a small full-length panel picture of the 

267 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

Emperor, which I beheve was done by an EngUsh 
artist in Berhn. A picture of a plainly attired and 
certainly by no means pretty lady occupied rather 
a prominent position on the wall near the door of 
the room. 

This lady some years ago was a member of the 
household, and stood higher in the regard of the 
Emperor than most ladies in the Royal entourage. 
She apparently affected to have the gift of prophecy, 
and declared that the Emperor was destined to 
rule over the mightiest empire the world had ever 
seen. 

The Emperor liked this sort of flattery, and the 
lady, who was the widow of an officer, was given 
a position in the Royal establishment. She was 
thoroughly detested by everybody in it, especially 
by the Empress, and was eventually compelled to 
resign. The Kaiser showed his liking for her, 
however, by having her portrait painted and hang- 
ing it in his room. 

It was in this writing-room that the Kaiser 
held his councils with his ministers, generals and 
admirals. At these councils the Kaiser, of course, 
sat at the head of the table. The All Highest was 
much more in his element at such meetings than 
when he was engaged in attending to his corre- 
spondence, a task that was always distasteful to 
him. As a general rule, on the day of a council 
meeting at the Neues Palais, the ministers and 
officers summoned to it were assembled at least 

268 



The Days before the War 



a quarter of an hour before the Emperor made his 
appearance ; but at those meetings that took place 
in the first week of July before the war, the 
Emperor would actually be in the room long before 
the hour of the meeting, and would walk impati- 
ently up and down the room until all had arrived. 
Moreover, special care was taken to guard the secrecy 
of what was said at these councils. The corridors 
leading to the Kaiser's personal apartments were 
patrolled, not by servants as is normally done, but 
by officials of the household. 

The Emperor was in these days extremely im- 
patient and irritable, and his entourage must have 
had an extraordinarily uncomfortable time of it. 
I was told that one morning when he went into his 
writing-room and did not find his secretary there, 
although it was an hour before the time the secretary 
had been instructed to attend, he summoned a 
couple of equerries, rushed at them when they 
entered the room, and after abusing them in the 
most violent manner for no cause, told them to go 
to the secretary's apartments and bring him to his 
presence. " Bring him straight out of his bed, if he 
is in it," shouted the Emperor; but the secretary, 
luckily for himself, was almost dressed when the 
Emperor's summons reached him. But violent 
and easily roused as was his temper, the Kaiser in 
those days was often after a council meeting very 
quiet and subdued. After a council meeting held 
just before the Court left the Neues Palais, the 

269 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

Kaiser was seen by an equerry after the officers and 
ministers had left the Palace sitting at the head 
of the table by himself gesticulating and talking 
to himself. " When he came out of the room he 
was very pale and there was a strange look in his 
eyes," said an official of the household whom the 
Emperor passed when coming out of his room. It 
was the sort of look I have seen in his eyes some- 
times when out shooting big game. I expect that 
what most occupied the Emperor's thoughts in 
these days was how far he could rely upon England 
not coming into the war. There is no doubt that 
the Kaiser and his Government had taken every 
possible step to safeguard against the possible 
intervention of Great Britain in the war that 
Germany had been so carefully preparing for, in the 
deliberate intent to win the supreme domination 
of Europe. Yet the Kaiser can never have been 
quite sure that England would not intervene. The 
doubt as to Great Britain's intention must have 
given him some horribly anxious moments. 



270 



CHAPTER XII 

AT POTSDAM AFTER THE DECLARATION OF WAR 

I WAS in Berlin the night the Kaiser declared 
war against Russia. The streets were crowded 
with people, and there had been rumours flying 
about all day. At Klein Glienicke, at any rate, 
there seemed no fear that Germany would be 
involved in a war with England, though it was 
regarded as practically certain that it would be 
declared between the Central Empires and Russia 
and France. A number of English people left 
Berlin on the 30th of July, and two friends of 
mine did all they could to persuade me to go 
with them; but I felt convinced from what I 
knew at Klein Glienicke that there would not 
be war between Germany and England, and I 
therefore resolved to remain on. 

There was a special service held in the chapel 
at the Imperial Schloss, Berlin, by order of the 
Kaiser on the afternoon of the day on which war 
was declared against Russia, which all the members 
of the Royal family were ordered to attend. When 
I got back to Potsdam at seven o'clock I found 
that the Princess Leopold had gone to this service, 
from which she returned in tears. 

271 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

" We are going to war with Russia," she said 
to me, " and my husband and my sons must go 
to the front." The Princess set about making 
preparations at once for the departure of the 
Prince Leopold and her sons on active service. 
Prince Frederick Charles and Prince Frederick 
Siegesmund were then at Dantzig, but they returned 
to Klein Glienicke on the 4th of August. The 
Princess Leopold was in very low spirits ; I heard 
her say to her youngest son, " Oh, my dear boy, 
we are lost if England fights against us." When 
the news that England had declared war on Germany 
reached Klein Glienicke it was like a bombshell. 
When the Princess Leopold met me in one of the 
corridors, she stopped and said, " Your treacherous 
country has taken advantage of our difficulties and 
declared war on us." That was all she said. She 
was very pale and fearfully agitated, and then it 
broke on me all at once how dangerous was my 
position in that German Royal establishment, and 
how foolish it was of me not to have gone to 
England with my friends. At that time I did 
not at all clearly understand why England was 
making war on Germany. I had not seen an 
English paper for three days, and the German 
papers were simply full of lies as to the reason of 
England's intervention. But that afternoon I 
learnt from an English friend of mine in Berlin 
the real reason of our going to war, and how Germany 
had resolved on violating Belgian neutrality. I 

272 



At Potsdam after Declaration of War 

felt as every English man or woman in Berlin felt, 
proud of being an Englishwoman, and thankful 
that my country had refused to stand aside and 
keep out of the war at the price of her honour; 
but I saw at once how awkward my position at 
Klein Glienicke was, and resolved to get away as 
soon as possible. I had little idea how difficult a 
task it was going to be for me to do this, or how 
anxious and terrible a time was before me. I had 
yet to experience what German hatred of English 
people meant. The young Princes and their father 
departed to the front on the 4th of August. 
Prince Charles, when he came to say good-bye, 
showed me that he was wearing his football boots 
that he had had from England. " They are much 
better than our regimental boots," he said, laugh- 
ing, " and I wish I had half-a-dozen pairs of 
them." 

The Princess put a chain round the neck of 
each of her boys with a lucky charm. She also 
put a number of silver coins in a leather case, 
which the boys were to wear in a pocket over 
their heart. Prince Leopold departed with quite 
a small army of servants and various attendants — 
among his suite were two doctors and a couple of 
cooks. He had also a most elaborate travelling 
kitchen and quite a pile of luggage. None of us 
at Klein Glienicke, not even the Princess Leopold, 
knew what part of the front her sons or husband 
were going to. Later, however, I heard that Prince 
s 278 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

Leopold had gone to some base on the Western 
front, and the young Princes to the Eastern 
front. 

I often wondered what Prince Leopold would 
do if he got into the fighting area. I am perfectly- 
sure that the first shell that burst near him would 
have killed him with fright. Whatever occupation 
Nature may have designed him for, it was not 
war. I suppose the Kaiser found some safe and 
comfortable billet for him at a base, but I never 
heard precisely what part of the front he had been 
sent to. 

Almost immediately after the departure of the 
Prince Leopold and the boys, Prince Reuss and 
Princess Margarethe arrived at Klein Glienicke. 
The Prince departed for the front the next day 
and the Princess stayed on with her mother. This 
was a happy circumstance for me, for I felt that 
I had then got but one friend in the German 
Royal household, where the bitterest hatred to- 
wards England existed, and was openly aroused 
on every possible occasion by so many members 
of it. 

The day after the departure of Prince Leopold 
and the young Princes I went to see the Prince's 
adjutant about going back to England. Herr von 
Maltzahn, the adjutant, was an elderly man. I 
had always thought him a kind-hearted one : he 
had done me several acts of kindness in the days 
before the war, so I went to consult him hopefully 

274 



At Potsdam after Declaration of War 

about my position and how I could get back to 
England. 

He received me very coldly, and directly I began 
to speak to him about my going home he started 
up out of his chair and exclaimed, " I cannot listen 
to you. I cannot help you. Blood is thicker than 
water, and I am now only thinking of my own 
people." 

I was amazed and frightened at the way he spoke ; 
I never before had heard him speak like that to 
any one. He glared fiercely at me, and his voice 
almost shook with anger. I hurriedly left the room, 
and saw that for the present, at any rate, it was 
hopeless to think of getting back to England. 
Everywhere about me I heard expressions of hatred 
towards England and comments upon what the 
Germans called my country's treachery. I learnt 
later that on the evening when the news that 
England had declared war on Germany reached the 
Marmor Palais, the Crown Princess ran into the 
nurseries and said to her children, " The wickedest 
man in the world is Sir Edward Grey." She made 
each of her children repeat Sir Edward Grey's name, 
and told them that they must always hate that 
wicked man because he had brought the most 
terrible calamity on the world. 

Day after day my position at Klein Glienicke 
grew more intolerable. The whole household were 
talking of the atrocities committed by ourselves 
and our allies, especially the Belgians. It was only 

275 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

after I had left Germany that I learned the truth 
about them. What the Germans did was to 
deliberately circulate stories to the effect that 
the very atrocities which they were themselves 
committing in Belgium were being committed by 
English, French and Belgian soldiers. The Ger- 
mans added to their guilt by circulating those 
frightful falsehoods which were definitely believed 
by their own people at home, and I confess that, 
shut off from hearing the truth about the war as 
I was, I was inclined to think that there must be 
some truth in these terrible stories. The Princess 
Leopold certainly believed them, and so did the 
Princess Margarethe, and they asked me were 
not the crimes of the English soldiers and their 
allies very terrible ? I heard that Prince August 
Wilhelm related how the Royal Army Medical 
Corps were served out with jack-knives for the 
purpose of gouging out the eyes of the wounded 
Germans, and the Prince produced one of the 
knives. I do not know whether the Prince really 
believed this story or not himself, but I am quite 
certain that every member of the German Royal 
family did. Directly after war was declared evi- 
dences of the well preparedness of the Germans 
were seen in several directions about Potsdam. 
Some seven or eight miles from Klein Glienicke, 
about seven hundred acres were at once enclosed 
and converted into a Zeppelin experimental and 
building station. This station was guarded with 

276 



At Potsdam after Declaration of War 

the greatest care from approach by all except 
properly authorized persons. No one was allowed 
to come within five miles of it without a military 
permit. A couple of days after the declaration of 
war by England I was stopped by two sentries 
posted on a road that led to the station ; my name 
and address were taken, and I was detained by the 
sentries until a patrol passed ; one of the soldiers 
was ordered to see me back to Klein Glienicke, and 
to ascertain if my statement that I was employed 
there by the Princess were true. 

I heard an officer, who was quartered at this 
Zeppelin station, say that within forty-eight hours 
of the enclosing of the ground, the plant for the 
making of airships had been erected. A month 
after the outbreak of war certainly three Zeppelins 
had been constructed at the station, but all the 
different parts had already been made, so that 
really the airships had only to be put together. 

They carried out experiments in bomb-dropping 
at the station at night. This was done with dummy 
bombs, which were thrown from a height of about 
seven thousand feet. There were great rumours 
of what the Zeppelins were going to do, and some 
members of the household at Klein Glienicke took 
quite a pleasure in picturing to me the ruin and 
havoc that would be wrought by the Zeppelins 
very soon in England. 

The Princess Leopold told me quite seriously that 
the Germans would have a fleet of 1000 Zeppelins 

277 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

before long, and they would not only destroy 
London and Paris, but the English fleet. The 
Princess did not tell me this to frighten me. She 
told it to me as an absolute fact that she really 
believed, and suggested that I should dismiss all 
thoughts of going back to England because I would 
be much safer in Potsdam. A lady whose husband 
was an officer in a Zeppelin came to Klein Glienicke 
one afternoon, and talked a great deal about all the 
wonders that these airships were going to perform. 
She said that the Zeppelins were specially intended 
for an attack on London. '' We don't want to 
smash up Paris," said she ; " our troops will capture 
Paris very soon, but we will make a great attack 
on London before long." She said that they were 
making bombs at Essen which were of such destruc- 
tive force that if a single one of them were dropped 
in a street a hundred yards in length it would blow 
every house in it to pieces. " You can imagine the 
ruin London will be in," she said, " when it has 
been bombed by twenty Zeppelins each carrying 
forty of these bombs." She told me that the 
commanders of the Zeppelins who made the 
attacks on England would receive a gratuity of 
£500 each for each attack, and other officers sums 
varying from £250 to £50, and each of the crew £5. 
I did not quite believe all this, but I did believe 
that there was some truth in what this lady said, 
and the reader can imagine what my feelings 
were. 

278 



At Potsdam after Declaration of War 

Another example, in a small way, of the thor- 
oughness of the German preparations was the 
extraordinary efficiency of the steps they took on 
the outbreak of war for catching spies. The day 
after the declaration of war on Russia they had 
sentries posted every half-mile on all the roads 
leading out of Potsdam for a distance of five miles. 
The orders given to the sentries were that every 
motor-car approaching or leaving Potsdam should 
be held up, the papers in the possession of the 
occupants of the cars were to be examined, and if 
any of these papers raised the least doubt that the 
owners or holders of them were suspicious char- 
acters, they were at once to be taken to the military 
commandant at Potsdam. If the occupants of the 
cars had no papers and were foreigners the same 
thing was to be done. The sentries were strictly 
enjoined that all motor-cars were to be stopped, 
and that no exception was to be made even in favour 
of Royal cars. As a matter of fact, one of the 
first cars to be held up was one from the Neues 
Palais containing Prince August Wilhelm and 
two members of the Imperial establishment. The 
Princess Leopold frequently had her car stopped; 
she had a special military permit, and she had 
to show this at each place where sentries were 
posted. 

I knew that during the first three days of 
the war spies were caught trying to get out of 
Potsdam, and were shot almost out of hand at 

279 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

Bornstadter-Feld. During the early weeks of the 
war, strong as was the feehng against the EngUsh 
about Potsdam and Berlin, it was to some extent 
tempered by the idea the Germans had that the 
fighting was going all in their favour. After the 
fall of Liege and Namur, Berlin simply went mad 
with excitement. All the school-children were given 
holidays and flags were flying everywhere, and the 
church bells set ringing. I remember the Princess 
Leopold saying to me one day about this time, 
" I never expected such great victories so early in 
the war. It will be over in a few months, thank 
goodness." But later, after the battle of the 
Marne, the feeling towards the English became 
very bad. As a matter of fact, I never heard of 
the battle of the Marne until I reached Flushing 
on my way home to England. There was not a 
word about a battle in the German papers, but in 
spite of the strict censorship and all the lies that 
were published broadcast to cheer the German 
people, rumours got about that all was not going 
quite so well with the German arms as the Press 
made out. The wounded, you see, were coming 
into Berlin, and all the censorship in the world 
could not stop their mouths. Some time in the 
beginning of October I heard from the Princess 
Leopold that the German Army had had a slight 
reverse. "It is nothing serious at all," she said; 
*' part of the army on the Western front has had 
to fall back a few miles ; the Government ought to 

280 



I 



At Potsdam after Declaration of War 

make a proper statement about it to stop all those 
rumours of a disaster. ^^ 

I guessed, however, that this slight reverse to 
the German arms was worse than the Princess 
Leopold made it out to be, perhaps really believed 
it to be ; the wife of an officer in the Prussian Guard 
was at Klein Glienicke one afternoon, and I heard 
her say, speaking of this reverse, that it was wholly 
due to the blundering of the Crown Prince, and 
that he deserved to be shot. I did not think 
that she would speak like that unless the reverse 
had been rather serious, and I felt somewhat 
comforted. 

But the immediate effect of the failure of the 
Germans and their retreat from before Paris was 
a bad thing for me. The hatred against my 
country and country people became very violent, 
and this was encouraged by the German Govern- 
ment, though, of course, I did not know this until 
much later. A report got about (it was, as a 
matter of fact, deliberately circulated by the 
German Government) that the English were intern- 
ing the Germans in England and were ill-treating 
them. I am quite certain that the Princess Leopold 
knew this report was untrue, because she told me 
that she did not believe it, and she said this in a 
way that convinced me that she very probably 
had good information to the effect that it was not 
true. But the immediate effect of the report was 
to make the situation of the English people in 

281 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

Berlin and Potsdam extremely unpleasant, if not 
actually dangerous. One evening, when I was in 
Berlin, there was a great uproar in a street, when a 
meeting was being addressed by some one who told 
the crowd that the English were putting all the 
Germans in England into prison and were shame- 
fully ill-treating them. I stood on the outskirts 
of the crowd listening to the speaker for a few 
minutes and then hastened away. The following 
night, as I was going to bed, I heard a great shout- 
ing outside and hammering at the Schloss gates. 
The Princess Leopold presently came to tell me 
that there was a crowd outside the Schloss shout- 
ing out things against the English, and asking 
why the Princess employed English people, and 
demanding that she should get rid of them at 
once. 

The Princess, furious at the occurrence and 
with the crowd, the next day sent the Hof-Marschal 
to the police to tell them of the occurrence, and 
to ask the police officer to make it publicly known 
that she would retain the English people she had 
in her employment if she chose, and that she would 
take steps to have any one who interfered in this 
matter or with her English employees very severely 
punished. I do not think that the Princess did 
this because she was specially fond of myself or 
her English gardener and his wife, who were the 
English people who were in her employment ; but 
it was characteristic of her that she could not 

282 



At Potsdam after Declaration of War 

tolerate the idea of people, especially a rowdy 
crowd of work-people, trying to interfere in any 
way with her actions. I must say the Princess did 
not lack courage ; she said that if the crowd came 
again to the Schloss at night she would go out 
with the Hof-Marschal and have some of them 
arrested. However, the crowd did not come again. 
But very shortly afterwards the German Govern- 
ment decided to intern all Englishmen in Germany. 
I have not now the least doubt, in my own mind, 
that the German Government circulated the reports 
about the internment and ill-treatment of the 
Germans in England to give them an excuse for 
interning the English in Berlin. 

I must say that the Germans did this very 
thoroughly, and without the least regard to " in- 
fluences " that were exercised to reserve to some 
English people their liberty. A week later every 
Englishman in Germany was interned. The Princess 
Leopold declared that she would not allow her 
English gardener to be interned, but, as related in 
the early portion of these recollections, he had to 
go to Ruhleben. 

The Princess sent a long telegram to the Kaiser 
at the front about the matter, but the All Highest 
would not attempt to interfere with the action of 
the military authorities, and even the Kaiser's own 
English gardener was interned. 

Englishwomen were not interned, but they were 
placed under the strictest military supervision, 

283 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

which I beUeve in my case was specially strict, 
because I was employed in a Royal household. 
I had, in the first place, to get a military permit 
allowing me to remain in the employ of the Princess ; 
I had always to carry it about with me, and pro- 
duce it whenever I was asked for it by the myriads 
of officials about Potsdam. I had to report myself 
at the police station twice daily, at 9 a.m. and 5 p.m. 
I was not allowed out of the Schloss after 8 p.m., 
and could not go beyond a mile and a half radius 
from Klein Glienicke without special leave. From 
this time until I left Potsdam mv life was a burden 
to me. 

Only a person who has been in my position can 
understand the intolerable feeling of uneasiness 
and irritation it engenders, to know that from the 
time you rise in the morning until you go to bed 
at night you are being watched by hostile and 
suspicious eyes. It nearly drove me mad. Wher- 
ever I went, even within the narrow radius allowed 
to me, I was watched and spied on, and all my 
movements were reported to the Princess Leopold 
and to the police. One day I was taking a parcel 
to the post. I was asked what was in it, and said 
that I was sending a blouse to a friend, but I was not 
believed. I had to open the parcel for an official's 
inspection. Every word I uttered to any one in 
the establishment was liable to be misunderstood and 
duly reported to the police or military authorities, 
and that meant that I had to explain my words to 

284 



At Potsdam after Declaration of War 

some official. This happened twice. I told some 
one at Klein Glienicke that I did not believe that 
the Germans were in Paris. I said this in reference 
to a report that had been current for the past few 
days to this effect. " Why don't you believe it ? " 
said the girl to whom I made the remark. " Be- 
cause I am quite sure that if the Germans were in 
Paris they would make it officially known as soon 
as possible," I replied. That was all. The girl 
repeated my remark to some official, and I was 
called upon to explain it. I could offer no ex- 
planation except to repeat my words. I was then 
cautioned against making any remarks about what 
the German Government might or might not do, 
and was set free. 

The only person I had to talk to that I had 
any sympathy with, or that had any sympathy 
with me, was the wife of the English gardener, 
and even my conversations with her had to be 
guarded, for I never knew how much of it might 
be overheard. There were eavesdroppers every- 
where about me. Of course, I could talk sometimes 
to the Princess Margarethe ; the war had not 
interfered in the least w^ith our friendship, but 
still the broad fact remained that she was German 
and I was English, and her sympathies were 
naturally altogether with her own people. She 
believed all the evil and lying reports that had 
been circulated by the Germans about my country, 
and her attitude towards me may be best expressed 

285 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

by stating that she did not hold me responsible 
for what my country people did. That was rather 
a trying thing for me, because, although I had no 
actual proof of it, I felt convinced that at least 
some of the stories that she believed were simply 
malicious inventions. I once said something to 
this effect to her, and suggested that English 
soldiers or officers had never been guilty of any 
of the crimes which they were now accused by the 
Germans in any of the wars that they had been 
engaged in. 

She only said that she was afraid that most of 
what was being said about the English, French 
and Belgian soldiers was true, but added that she 
hoped that it was not all true. 

The misery I was enduring, the anxiety, the 
longing to learn the real truth about the war and 
to get news of my near relations in England, soon 
resulted in a breakdown in my health, I became 
very ill with neuritis. I was laid up in bed for 
about a week, and then, as I showed no signs of 
getting better, the Princess Leopold sent for a 
doctor. Their own regular doctor attached to the 
household had gone to the front with the Princes 
Frederick Charles and Siegesmund. The doctor 
summoned to see me was a refuoree from East 
Prussia. The man, I dare say, may have been a 
doctor, but his manner and behaviour were in 
keeping with those of the worst type of Prussian 
soldier. He told me very roughly that he would 

286 



At Potsdam after Declaration of War 

give me electric treatment, and ordered me to come 
to his house in Berhn. I did not at all want to 
go ; but the Princess Leopold said that I must, and 
ridiculed my fears when I spoke of the doctor's 
roughness. 

I went to his house the next day ; when I entered 
his room he hardly took the least notice of me. 
He was reading some letters at his desk, and never 
even asked me to sit down. After keeping me 
standing for about ten minutes, he turned round 
and said very roughly, " Sit down in that chair," 
pointing to one, and then added, " I'll soon cure 
you of this attack." 

He applied some electric sort of brush to my 
forehead and the side of my face ; I received a 
frightful shock and nearly fainted. When I re- 
covered I made a motion to get out of the chair, 
but he said, " Don't do that. I was going, I 
told you, to cure you of this attack of neuritis." 
I cannot describe the hideousness and brutality of 
his face and the horrible grin that accompanied 
the w^ords. 

I became weak with terror. I felt sure that the 
man wanted to kill me. I thought he might be a 
maniac, or that he w^anted to kill me simply because 
I was an English girl. I made another effort to 
get out of the chair, but he almost flung me back 
into it, and then once again applied that awful 
brush to my face. The woman who assisted the 
doctor never said a w^ord to me, and I took my 

287 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

departure thankful to get alive out of the house. 
\Vhen I went back to Klem Glienicke I intended 
to tell the Princess what had happened, but after- 
wards I thought it wiser not to. I knew that she 
would not believe anything against the doctor, 
and certainly would not credit that he had had 
any intention of deliberately injuring me. I do 
not really know whether he had or not. Perhaps 
he had not ; but he was one of the most brutal, 
horrible men I have ever encountered. I remained 
in bed for a few days, but refused to see him 
again. Then, though I was still feeling far from 
well, I thought it better to get up, as I knew if I 
stayed in bed the Princess Leopold would insist 
on my seeing this terrible doctor. I resolved then 
to make a determined effort to get back to England. 



288 



CHAPTER XIII 

I LEAVE POTSDAM 

I MUST explain that almost directly after the 
outbreak of war I applied to Mr. Gerard, the 
American Ambassador, for a passport to England. 
At the Embass^^ they explained to me that before 
I could get it, it would be necessary for me to get 
the Princess Leopold, or some responsible member 
of her household, to certify that I was of English 
birth, for I had not my birth certificate with me. 

When I went to see Herr von Maltzahn, the 
adjutant at Klein Glienicke, I had intended to 
ask him to write to the Embassy about the matter, 
but on account of his angry reception of me I did 
not do so, and for the moment I let the matter 
drop. The Princess Leopold was obviously most 
anxious that I should not leave Klein Glienicke, 
and I knew that if she did not want me to go she 
could make it difficult for me to get away. But 
after my illness I went to the Princess and told 
her that I was now practically a prisoner at 
Klein Glienicke, and that I greatly disliked being 
there on such conditions and under such restric- 
tions as I had to endure. 

" I cannot help you," she said. " Well," I 
said, " I must go back to England — I am not going 
T 289 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

to be kept here as a prisoner." " I don't think 
you can go home," said the Princess, and then 
added, rather significantly, " I think you know too 
much." I then went to the Princess Margarethe 
and told her what her mother had said. 

The chief difficulty that lay in the way of my 
getting back to England was, that I could not go 
without a passport, and I could not get a passport 
unless the Princess Leopold, or some responsible 
person in her household, wrote to Mr. Gerard to 
say that I was of English birth. If the Princess 
Leopold did not want me to go she would, and I 
believe actually did, instruct the Hof-Marschal 
not to write or allow any one else to write the 
required guarantee of my English birth to the 
American Embassy. In such circumstances I 
would, therefore, find it impossible to get back to 
England. I explained all this to the Princess 
Margarethe, and she undertook to get some one 
to write the required guarantee. But the days 
passed, and my passport was still not forthcoming. 
There was nothing for me to do but to hope and to 
wait. To have an open falling out with any one 
at Klein Glienicke would, I knew, be fatal to all my 
chances of getting away, and possibly might result 
in my being interned ; I knew if that happened 
I would be locked up until the end of the war. 

At this time the Princess Leopold had hit upon 
rather an ingenious way of getting in gifts of 
fruit, vegetables, cigarettes, shirts, socks, etc., for 

290 



I Leave Potsdam 



the German soldiers which she, in common with 
many other German Royal ladies, was collecting. 

She arranged to hold a reception at Berlin on 
three days in the week, to which all givers of 
presents for the soldiers were invited, and received 
in return the honour and distinction of a handshake 
with a Prussian Princess, and also a receipt for 
their gifts signed by her. 

This brought hundreds of persons of all ranks 
and classes to the Palace. Artisans, clerks, shop- 
keepers and their wives, as well as well-to-do 
people in Society, came to the Schloss with their 
gifts. 

Some brought rather strange gifts. One elderly 
lady arrived with a small lap-dog, another with a 
cat, and a young girl brought a parrot. The latter 
was the cause of some disturbance. The bird 
apparently had an ill temper, and very bad manners. 
It was, indeed, a very Boche of a bird. It preserved 
for some time a complete silence, and then it began 
to talk. Its first utterance was addressed appar- 
ently to a clergyman standing near, whom it con- 
signed in the clearest tones to a very hot place, 
and then broke into a stream of quite shocking 
abuse levelled at everybody. The cage was hastily 
covered, which put a stop to Polly's utterances. 
The Princess had to decline to receive gifts of this 
sort. 

The Princess Leopold after the outbreak of the 
war desired to go as a Red Cross nurse to the 

291 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

front; she wanted to do this so that she might 
be able to nurse her husband or sons if they were 
wounded. The Emperor, however, for some reason 
would not permit the Princess to do this, but she 
was made the visiting superintendent of four 
military hospitals in Berlin, which she went to 
every day. 

In this capacity the Princess performed an act 
of kindness to an English officer, which I ought to 
mention. 

This officer was suffering from an illness brought 
about by a wound which, though slight in itself, 
resulted in some form of blood poisoning. The 
doctor in charge at the hospital ordered the officer's 
removal, after he had been in the hospital for a 
couple of weeks, to a camp for prisoners of war. 
The Princess saw the officer, and thought that he 
was not sufficiently recovered to leave the hospital, 
and she saw the doctor in charge upon the subject. 
The doctor, however, declined to allow the officer 
to remain longer in hospital, and stated that in his 
opinion he was now in a fit state to be removed. 

The Princess then promptly rang up the Empress 
from the hospital, and told her of the case, stating 
that the officer looked extremely ill, and that she 
was sure it would be dangerous to remove him. 
The Empress could not well interfere with the 
decision of the doctor in charge, but at the Prin- 
cess's urgent request she came herself to the 
hospital and saw the officer; then she had a 

292 



I Leave Potsdam 



conversation with the doctor in charge. The doctor 
stuck to his original opinion, but consented to 
other advice being taken ; a doctor attached to the 
Imperial household was summoned, and after a 
consultation with the hospital doctor the officer 
was ordered to be kept at the hospital for two 
wxeks longer; by that time he had completely 
recovered his health. 

The Princess Leopold, as the result of this action, 
was rather seriously attacked by some people 
connected w4th the hospital and accused of pro- 
British sympathies; people who disliked her per- 
sonally took advantage of the incident to make 
her position at the hospital unpleasant, and they 
talked about the Princess employing English people 
at Klein Glienicke. 

But the Princess was not in the least the sort of 
person to pay any attention to an attack on her 
of this kind. She told some of the lady visitors 
at the hospital one day, that if she could help it 
she would never tolerate or allow any British or 
French officers to be badly treated at the hospital. 
" In this hospital," the Princess said, " we have 
no enemies, only patients whom it is our bounden 
duty to look after as well as we can, and I intend 
that that shall be done no matter who the patients 
are." 

I rather admired her for this. The Princess 
w^as, of course, not in the least pro-British ; she w^as 
thorough German, and all her sympathies were with 

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Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

her own people ; but once she had taken it into her 
head to do anything that she thought she ought to 
do, accusations of being pro-Ally had absolutely no 
effect on her. 

All the gifts that the Princess Leopold collected 
for the German soldiers she sent off to the front 
by an ambulance train to the different military 
bases. I had to help her in packing these gifts up, and 
in doing this I felt I was rather helping the enemy, 
but of course I could not well object. 

\Miilst I was helping her once to pack up these 
gifts, the Princess told me that the Admiralty 
were preparing a great plan for star\nng out 
England by means of submarines. " I am really 
rather sony^ for your country," she said; "all your 
country people will be star\ang in a few months, 
and they will have to give in before the spring." 

In those early days of the war women of wealth 
and social influence were always endeavouring to 
get to places at the front to see their husbands, 
sons or relations. The headquarters of some 
generals became for a short while the scenes of 
quite fashionable gatherings. The Kaiser, however, 
very quickly put a stop to this sort of thing; 
he arrived one evening unexpectedly at a small 
town — Duren I think it was — which was the head- 
quarters of a general who had the reputation 
for being excessively kind and hospitable to fair 
visitors. The Kaiser found that nearly a dozen 
houses were occupied by as many ladies with a 

294 



I Leave Potsdam 



large number of servants; I heard the Princess 
Marie of Anhalt, who later married Prince Joachim, 
was among the lady visitors to this general's head- 
quarters. The presence, however, of a Princess 
did not alter the Kaiser's resolve to make an ex- 
ample of generals who encouraged the visits to 
his headquarters of fashionable ladies. The Em- 
peror, to start with, ordered that any lady at Duren 
should leave it within one hour, and the general, 
who was in a sort of way the host of these ladies, 
was sent back to Berlin to take duty at a reserve 
camp somewhere. From that time no lady was 
allowed to visit any place near the zone of military 
operations. 

It was just before this incident, that the Princess 
Leopold went to visit her husband. She brought 
back a curious story with her, to the effect that 
Prince Arthur of Connaught had been captured. 
The story, of course, was not true, but it was 
generally believed at the German Court. 

In those early days of the war there must have 
been a great deal of looting from the rich houses 
in Northern France and Belgium. The example 
of the Crown Prince was, I suppose, followed by 
other officers. .1 heard of jewels, pictures, antique 
furniture and other objects of art, and even ladies' 
dresses being brought back by German officers, 
invalided from the front. 

A lady who was at Klein Glienicke one afternoon, 
who was a Red Cross nurse, told a story of a friend 

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Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

of hers in Berlin, whose husband had brought back 
from the front six large jewel cases filled with 
diamond and pearl necklaces, rings and various 
ornaments. Another officer I heard of brought 
back with him two Louis XV chairs, which he said 
was his share of the loot from some country mansion 
near Lille. 

A servant from the Neues Palais, who was 
invalided back from the front a month or so after 
the outbreak of war, brought back a massive gold 
cigarette case with the words " To dear Dickie, from 
P.R." engraved in the inside; it contained half- 
a-dozen cigarettes and half of a first-class return 
ticket from London to Brighton. The servant 
found the cigarette case, so he said, in a captured 
British trench. 

Every day I was expecting my passport, but it 
did not arrive. I ought to say, by the way, that 
towards the end of November Prince Reuss came 
to Klein Glienicke from the front. He had been 
given a short leave on account of illness. 

I spoke to him and the Princess again about my 
passport, and they both promised that they would 
do everything to get it for me as soon as possible. 
Prince Reuss, however, urged me not to go to 
London. " I hear," he said, " on the best authority, 
that London is in a very bad state. Food is scarce 
and terribly dear; the streets at night are all in 
darkness, and there is constant rioting going on." 

The Prince certainly did not invent all this merely 

296 



I Leave Potsdam 



to keep me at Klein Glienicke, he really believed 
that what he said was true, and that I would be 
safer and better off at Potsdam than in London. 
I also believed that what he said was true. I had 
no proof that it was not, and I supposed that a man 
in the position of Prince Reuss would have access 
to good information; but, whether everybody in 
England was on the verge of starvation or not, 
I was fully resolved to get back home as soon as I 
possibly could. In looking back on the reports 
that I heard in Germany, about how the people 
in England were suffering, I am often amazed that 
such reports were believed by people in the position 
of Prince Reuss and the Princess Leopold. There 
is no doubt in my mind that the Kaiser and heads 
of his Government knew that these stories were 
absolutely false. I have not the least doubt that 
the Kaiser and the German Government were 
thoroughly well informed as to the state of affairs 
in England. I can understand that the German 
Government desired to circulate lies among the 
mass of the people, and to encourage them to 
believe that England was in a state of semi-star- 
vation, and suffering many other hardships. To 
encourage that sort of belief made the work of 
government easier, and kept up the spirits of the 
people. But I cannot understand why such lies 
were told to people in the position of Prince Reuss, 
and I am still more at a loss to understand why 
people in high places like the Prince, who must have 

297 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

come into frequent touch with people who knew 
the truth, should have believed such lies as they 
undoubtedly did. 

When I came back to England I found many 
ridiculous statements in the English papers about 
how people were suffering from a shortage of food 
in Germany, and of high prices. But people here 
seemed rather sceptical about the truth of these 
stories, and I feel confident that highly placed 
people in England did not believe them for a 
moment. Moreover, in any case our Government 
gave no official backing to these stories. In 
Germany lies of that sort were officially circulated 
among all classes from the highest to the lowest, 
and all were equally deceived. One afternoon, 
shortly after the arrival of Prince Reuss, I went 
into Berlin to see a friend whom I thought might 
help me to get my passport, although she was a 
German. Properly speaking I ought to have ob- 
tained permission from the police to go to Berlin, 
but I was so anxious to go and so afraid that the 
permission might be refused that I went without 
doing so. In talking to my friend the time slipped 
quickly by, and it was nearly half-past four before I 
realized that I could not get back in time to report 
myself to the police at Potsdam at five o'clock. I 
therefore telephoned to the police station to tell 
them where I was, and to ask if I could report myself 
at half-past six on my way home to Klein Glienicke. 
The reply I got was, " Your time is five o'clock. 

298 



I Leave Potsdam 



You must report yourself then or take the conse- 
quences." 

I then telephoned to a member of the house- 
hold at Klein Glienicke asking if he would make 
some representation to the police about me and get 
the hour for reporting myself extended, but he 
said he could do nothing in the matter. There was 
nothing for it but to go back to Klein Glienicke 
and trust to fortune that I should not get into 
serious trouble. When I reached Potsdam I 
hesitated as to whether I should go then to the 
police station or straight to Klein Glienicke. I 
thought that it would be better to do the latter, 
because it was just possible that if I went to the 
police station I would be arrested there and then; 
it seemed impossible that I should actually be 
arrested at Klein Glienicke. When I arrived at 
the Schloss it was about a quarter to seven, and I 
then got a member of the household to telephone 
to the police station to say that I was at the Schloss. 
The next day I went to see the English gardener's 
wife, and she told me that she had heard that I 
would very probably be arrested for failing to 
report myself at five o'clock the previous day. She 
told me that I was regarded by the police as an 
" undesirable " person; that my letters were being 
opened, and that I might be arrested any hour. 
She advised me not to go outside Klein Glienicke 
at all. 

The same afternoon I received a letter from my 

299 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

father in England, which reached me nearly two 
months after it had been written, to say that 
he was ill and that he would like me to come back 
to England, if possible, at once. 

I then resolved that whatever happened I would 
go to England without any further delay. I went 
to the Princess Margarethe once more, and she told 
me that the required guarantee about my birth 
had been sent to the American Ambassador, and 
that my passport would be sent on very soon. 
For two days I remained indoors at Klein Glienicke ; 
I was afraid to stir out lest I might be arrested. 
Arrest was the thing I most dreaded. Once I 
passed into the hands of the police or military 
authorities, I knew that I would be a closely guarded 
prisoner until the war was over ; indeed, once I was 
arrested, it would be difficult to say what my fate 
might be, beyond that it would certainly mean the 
absolute loss of liberty and all chance of getting 
back to England for a long while, if ever again. 

Late at night on the third day of my confinement 
at Klein Glienicke my passport arrived, and with it 
permission to leave Germany by a train leaving 
Potsdam the next morning at about 6.30. 

This only gave me a few hours to get ready. I 
set about packing my things at once, and had every- 
thing ready by six o'clock. I should, perhaps, ex- 
plain that a week or so before this I had tried to 
withdraw my money from the bank where I had a 
deposit account, but was refused payment. The 

300 



I Leave Potsdam 



money is there still, and if Germany is not bankrupt 
at the end of the war I suppose I shall get it. 
However, I had some money in gold at Klein 
Glienicke — about £20 — quite enough to take me to 
England. I went to take my leave of the Princess 
Leopold, and she received me very coldly; she 
never inquired if I had enough money, although 
she must have known that I could not get 
any from the bank, which was refusing payment 
to all English depositors. She simply said, " I 
think you are foolish to go back to your own 
country." Then she shook hands and we parted. 
I had an affecting leave-taking from the Princess 
Margarethe and her husband. The Prince was 
very kind. " Perhaps you are right to go back to 
your own people," he said; '' after all, in war time 
we all want to be with our own." Then he asked 
me if I wanted money, and volunteered to advance 
me as much as I required, but I told him I had 
sufficient. 

I could not help crying when I bid the Princess 
Margarethe good-bye, and she too burst into tears. 
She was a dear, kind, good lady, and we had been 
very close friends for seven years. I felt parting 
from her intensely ; it seemed very improbable that 
we should ever meet again. 

Klein Glienicke stood sharp in the clear, cold 
morning air as I drove away from it. An odd 
light gleamed here and there from a window. I 
felt a queer sensation, somehow, as I took my last 

301 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

look at that home of Prussian royalty. I was 
delighted beyond measure to be out of it ; but yet 
I had a longing to see it just once again. I had 
at times been very happy there, and leaving it I 
wondered would I ever see it again, and how much 
must happen ere I did. 



302 



CHAPTER XIV 

MY JOURNEY HOME 

As I drove to the railway station at Potsdam I 
felt all sorts of forebodings that I might not yet 
be allowed to leave Germany. 

I knew I could trust the Princess Margarethe 
absolutely and her husband, but I felt doubtful 
about the Princess Leopold. Supposing, I thought, 
that the Princess Leopold wanted to keep me in 
Germany, what would be easier for her than to 
advise the military authorities to stop me and 
have me interned ? I know I wronged the Princess 
in thinking that she might do such a thing. She 
was capable of doing many spiteful and wicked 
things, but this was not the sort of thing she would 
have ever done. Had she resolved on keeping 
me at Klein Glienicke she would not have per- 
mitted me to obtain my passport. She put diffi- 
culties in the way of my getting it, but once she 
permitted the Hof-Marschal at Klein Glienicke 
to get it for me (and he must have had her permis- 
sion to do so), she would not take any steps to stop 
my going away. I ought to have felt sure of that, 
but at the moment I felt extremely nervous and 
suspicious of everybody about me. 

303 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

I may relate here an instance of peculiar treachery 
played by the Germans on the Dowager Empress of 
Russia, which was told me by the Princess Leopold ; 
though, of course, from her point of view, the 
Germans behaved rightly. 

It may be remembered that at the outbreak of 
war the Dowager Empress, who is a sister of Queen 
Alexandra, was in England. The Empress left 
to go back to Russia early in August of 1914. I 
saw reports afterwards in the English papers that 
the Empress had gone to Russia by the White 
Sea, and had landed at Archangel. This was not 
the case at all. As a matter of fact, her Majesty first 
of all went to Switzerland, and after she had been 
there a few weeks the German Government agreed 
to give her a safe-conduct through Germany to 
Russia. The German Government were not com- 
pelled to give the Empress a safe-conduct through 
their lines, but once it had been given it should 
have been strictly observed. 

What actually happened was that when the 
Empress reached the German lines on the Eastern 
front she was stopped; all her luggage was 
searched, and a large sum of gold — amounting, I 
believe, to £1500 — was taken from her. She was 
given German paper money in place of the gold. 
But both the searching of her luggage and the 
taking of the gold was done in direct violation of 
the pledge to allow the Empress a safe-conduct 
through Germany to her own country. Had it 

304 



My Journey Home 



suited the Germans to do so, they would not 
have had the sHghtest hesitation in detaining the 
Empress and her suite as prisoners. 

If the Germans treat an aged Royal lady in this 
fashion, I naturally thought they would have no 
hesitation in treating me more severely if it suited 
them. 

Some friends h%'mg in Potsdam were at the 
station at Berlin to meet me and see me off. 
When one of them told a porter to label my luggage 
for Flushing, he very roughly repUed that no 
EngUsh luggage ought to be allowed to leave the 
country, and he refused to label it. My friends 
then summoned a railway official, who promptly 
directed a porter to label my luggage at once and 
to have it put into the van. The official then 
very poUtely informed me that it would be all 
right, and wished me a pleasant and safe journey 
to England ; alas ! his poUteness was but a piece 
of German guile, as I was soon to find out. The 
Gk)vernment had decided that very day on detain- 
ing the luggage of Enghsh people leaving Berhn, 
and had instructed the railway officials when and 
where it was to be seized. The pohte railway 
official, of course, was perfectly well aware of this 
when he so considerately ordered the porter to 
label my luggage. 

On arriving at Wesel, where I had to change 
trains, I did not see any luggage anywhere. \Mien I 
began to make inquiries about it I was once more 
u 305 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

greeted by a polite railway officer, who with a 
reassuring and sympathetic smile told me that it 
was probable that it had been put into a wrong 
train at Hanover. He talked of the difficulties 
that the railway people experienced in such times 
of handling large quantities of luggage when there 
was a shortage of labour, and hoped that I would 
not be greatly inconvenienced by the temporary 
loss, the very temporary loss, he assured me, 
of mine, which perhaps might be at Flushing an 
hour or so after myself. I might have suspected 
that such politeness in a German railway official 
boded me no good. It was an unnatural thing. This 
official in saying what he did was, of course, deliber- 
ately lying to me. My luggage had actually been 
seized at Wesel, though I did not learn this until I got 
to Flushing, where I waited for three days in the hope 
of getting it. Ultimately I did get it, five months 
after my return to England, through the untiring 
efforts of an American gentleman. 

I travelled a good part of the journey with two 
German officers, with whom I got into conversation, 
and when they learned that I had been for several 
years at Klein Glienicke they became very friendly 
and pleasant. One of them knew a lady in the 
Princess's household, and had met the Princess her- 
self. They told me, with a laugh, that they were 
going to England themselves very soon. " Per- 
haps," said one, " we shall be there almost as soon 
as you are." 

306 



My Journey Home 



" I suppose," I said, " that you are coming to 
invade us ? " 

" That is it," they said. " We may be over any 
night now " and then one of them said, " When we 
come we shall stay for some time." 

Really they seemed quite certain that all the 
Kaiser's long-cherished plans for the invasion of 
England were about to materalize. I dare say they 
may think so still if they are alive — hope deferred 
does not seem to make the German heart in the 
least bit sick, apparently he is occasionally com- 
forted and cheered with some piece of Imperial 
brag. 

One of the officers, I think, was partially inclined 
to suspect that I was going to England on some 
sort of secret mission in German interests. I don't 
know. He asked me if I had any intention of trying 
to get back to Klein Glienicke soon, and when I 
told him that I had not, he said, '' Well, I suppose it 
would be a very dangerous thing for you to try to 
do, though I am sure the Princess would be glad to 
see you if you could get back." They both greatly 
praised the fighting qualities of the British troops. 
One of them told me he had charge of some officers 
who were captured during the retreat from Mons; 
one of them, a young officer of about eighteen who 
had had his elbow shattered by a bullet, said to the 
doctor when he had finished attending to him : 
" It does not much matter, doctor; I don't suppose 
you have got any golf links where I am going." 

307 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

" Fancy thinking of golf," said the officer who 
told me this story, " and the poor chap must have 
been in awful pain." 

One of them told me a rather amusing story about 
the Crown Prince. He said that the Crown Prince 
always took the best house he could get at any 
place where he moved his headquarters. At one 
town in Northern France the Prince seized upon a 
fine villa on the outskirts of the town where he 
intended to install himself. The house was com- 
fortably furnished; its occupants had fled before 
the approach of the Germany Army. The Prince 
glanced about the comfortable apartments down- 
stairs with satisfaction, and then went upstairs to 
have a look at the sleeping-rooms. He found each 
bed in the eight rooms occupied by a sleeping Boche ; 
the soldiers had been billeted there a few hours 
previously by a billeting officer after a long march, 
and it would have taken something in the nature 
of a high explosive to awaken them. The Prince 
made a few ineffectual efforts to do so by hitting 
them over the head with his sword case, but as the 
results were nil he was obliged to withdraw and 
look for a villa elsewhere. 

They also told me that four staff officers on von 
Kluck's staff were shot by a mad sentry one night 
during the first German rush on Paris. He said 
that the sentry was suffering from sunstroke; he 
was posted about half-a-mile from von Kluck's 

308 



My Journey Home 



headquarters. Shortly after midnight four officers 
on the staff approached the sentry post, whereupon 
without challenging them he fired his rifle at them 
as quickly as he could, one after the other. He 
killed the first two officers outright, and the other 
two subsequently died from their wounds. 

The firing brought a patrol quickly to the spot, 
and they found the mad sentry calmly endeavour- 
ing to dig a grave for his victims with his bayonet. 

Another story my companions told me was about 
an officer on the Crown Prince's staff; this man 
though he was a first-rate staff officer was disliked 
by the Prince on account of his dirty appearance, 
for he was punctiliously particular about the 
personal appearance of his staff. 

On one occasion, when the Prince and his staff 
were riding past a house, the Prince turned to the 
dirty-looking member of it, who had not apparently 
shaved for two days, and said to him : " For good- 
ness' sake go in there and shave and w^ash yourself — 
you look filthy ! " The dirty officer calmly passed 
his hand over his chin, and said to the Prince : 
" Tuesday in my washing day, sir, but I will shave 
if your Royal Highness desires now." The Prince 
then told him he need not do so, and added, " But I 
wish there were a few^ more Tuesdays in your week 
than there are." 

The Prince, I was told, had received orders from 
the Kaiser that he must never gamble with any 

309 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

members of his staff ; but he never paid any attention 
to this injunction, and used to play poker and 
baccarat for high stakes regularly with the members 
of his staff. 

One of the officers said that the Germans had made 
a big mistake somewhere in their attack on Paris. 
He said, " We should have attacked at Verdun as 
was originally planned years ago, but for some 
reason that plan was altered almost at the last 
moment, and as a result we had to fall back after 
the fight on the Marne. All the army is sure that 
if we had attacked at Verdun we would have got 
through." 

Neither of these officers, by the way, had at all the 
same belief in the great things that the Zeppelins 
were going to do as the Princess Leopold and others 
I met at Klein Glienicke had. 

One of them said, '' I dare say these Zeppelins 
may be useful, but I don't place much faith in the 
gasbags — they are awfully fragile, and if one is 
hit in any vital part the whole thing will come 
down." He told me that Count Zeppelin was not 
at all well liked among military men, and that he 
had had quarrels with several generals, most of 
whom did not want to have anything to say to his 
airships, and regarded them as practically useless 
for military purposes. " That is one of the reasons," 
said the officer, " why the control of the airships 
was placed under the Admiralty. The Count 

310 



My Journey Home 



wanted his airships divided into two classes, 
mihtary and naval, but the Kaiser decided before 
the outbreak of the war to have all the air- 
ships placed altogether under the control of the 
Admiralty." 

Both officers were, of course, quite sure that 
Germany must win the war, but they were divided 
in opinion as to how long it would last. One of 
them told me that after the battle of the Marne 
General von Kluck had declared that the war 
might last three years; he said that he had heard 
that, at a military council held after the Marne 
battle, the Kaiser had declared that if they could 
take Calais by the end of November the war would 
be over by the follow^ing spring. 

At Wesel the two officers left the train; I had 
to change into another train, and whilst I w^as 
waiting for it an official came up to me and asked 
me to have my gold ready, as all gold was to 
be taken from passengers leaving Germany, and 
German paper money was to be given them in its 
place. 

Many objected to this, but, of course, objections 
were of no avail; the money had to be given up. 
What I feared even more than losing my gold was 
that I might be deprived of my jewels, which I 
was carrying in a handbag. Officials, I noticed, 
were examining all handbags of passengers who 
were leaving Germany; after examining a bag the 

311 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

official put a chalk mark on it, which meant that 
it need not be examined again at the frontier. 

I was one of the last passengers to be approached 
by the examining officials ; when they came up 
to me I gave up my gold at once. Wliilst one of the 
officials was looking at my papers and passport 
and the other was getting ready the notes in 
exchange for my gold, I began to enter into con- 
versation with them. My papers showed that I 
had come from a German Royal household, and 
this fact greatly interested the officials. I praised 
the Princess, and told them several little anec- 
dotes about the estabhshment at Klein Glienicke. 
Presently a trolley with some refreshments came 
bv, and I asked the officials to let me " entertain " 
them, so they had beer and cigarettes at my expense. 
Meanwliile, I was trembling lest they should want 
to examine my bag, for I knew that it was almost 
a certainty that if they did they would take my 
jewels. It was in their power to take anything 
and give a receipt for it, and I felt pretty well con- 
\'inced that they would not resist the temptation of 
robbing me in this way of my jewels. I kept the 
officials chatting, and by the time the train came in 
we were on very friendly terms. I jumped into a 
carriage, and the officials were about to leave me 
when I remembered my bag had not been marked, 
and that it would therefore be liable to be examined 
at the frontier. I called out to them : " You have 

312 



My Journey Home 



forgotten to mark my bag," and held it out. One 
of them marked it at once, and directly afterwards 
the train moved out of the station, and so I saved 
my jewels. 

Three days later I landed at Folkestone. It was 
good to stand once more on English soil. I never, 
I think, properly understood before what love of 
one's country meant. I could have cried for joy 
to feel myself once more surrounded by my own 
country people, and to hear my native tongue 
talked about me ; even to see a familiar-looking 
English train gave me joy. 

I look back sometimes now and then to the 
days I spent at Potsdam, and my thoughts turn to 
the question of the future relationships between 
English people and their German friends. Will 
these friendships ever be renewed ? Has all that 
has happened since August 1914 made it impos- 
sible — for many a long year to come, at any rate — 
for English people to have any friendships with 
Germans ? 

Not long before I left Potsdam I was talking 
on this question to the Princess Margarethe; she 
laughed at the idea that the war could ever create 
feelings of enmity between us. " We are not at 
war with each other," she said; "our countries 
are at war, and each of us wants our own country 
to win, and each of us thinks our own country to be 

313 



Seven Years at the Prussian Court 

in the right ; but that need not make any difference 
in our friendship." And I felt that way too, not 
only about the Princess but about the few really 
intimate friends I had in Berlin. I felt that, no 
matter what happened or how the war ended, I 
would always meet these people on friendly terms 
and always think kindly of them, and I felt that 
way in spite of all I suffered at Klein Glienicke 
after the outbreak of war. It seemed to me what- 
ever I suffered or might suffer it was not the fault 
of my friends. But that was in the early days of 
the war, and I knew^ notliing then of the German 
atrocities in Belgium, and apart from that much 
has occurred since. I have seen the ruins of homes 
wTecked by ZeppeUns' bombs ; I have had brought 
home to me in many ways how unthinkably brutal 
is our enemy. I still know that those whom I 
loved in Germany are not responsible for what 
Germany has done. I even believe that if they 
understood and realized only a small portion of the 
crimes that the Germans have been guilty of, they 
would be filled with horror at them. Yet, believ- 
ing this and knowing that my friends in Germany 
are not responsible for these crimes, I feel that it 
would be very difficult to meet them on terms of 
friendship, for this reason : My friends in Germany 
wdll never understand or realize the truth about 
what the Germans have done. They will feel 
convinced either that the stories of the German 

314 



My Journey Home 



atrocities are inventions, or that they were justified 
in some way or other ; and that being so, I feel that 
personal friendship between English people and 
Germans has become impossible. I prefer to 
think of my German friends as I think of the dead. 
I look back upon those friendships I had in Berlin 
with pleasure, but I think of them as of things that 
have utterly passed away. 



THE END 



815 



PKrNTED IN Great Britain bt 

Richard Clay & Sons, Limited, 

brunswick st., stamford st., s.e., 

and bungay. suffolk. 



